Financial safety

Leaked U.S. government files suggest Deutsche Bank tops list of suspicious transactions

Germany’s largest lender Deutsche Bank appears to have facilitated more than half of the leaked $2 trillion of suspicious transactions that were flagged to the U.S. government over nearly two decades, reported German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW).

Those documents showed that between 1999 and 2017, $1.3 trillion of $2 trillion in leaked transactions that were flagged as suspicious passed through Deutsche Bank, according to the DW report.

The leaked documents contained suspicious activity reports that banks and other financial institutions filed with the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. Financial firms are required by law to alert regulators when they detect activities that may be suspicious, such as money laundering or sanctions violations. Such reports are not necessarily evidence of any criminal conduct.

In a statement posted on its website, the German bank said the incidents in the leaked documents “have already been investigated and led to regulatory resolutions in which the bank’s cooperation and remediation was publicly recognized. Where necessary and appropriate, consequence management was applied.”