German authorities raid Deutsche Bank over potential money laundering

Germany’s federal police office, criminal prosecutors and the country’s financial watchdog BaFin are raiding Deutsche Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt on Friday morning, prosecutors said in a statement.

Shares in Deutsche Bank fell almost 3 per cent on the news.

The prosecutors said that a search warrant was issued by Frankfurt’s district court. They declined to give further details.

Deutsche Bank confirmed the raid and said it was linked to suspicious activity reports issued by the bank that flagged potential money laundering.

In November 2018 Deutsche Bank was searched by 170 police officers, prosecutors and tax inspectors over alleged money laundering in a raid that hit the bank’s shares.

Then, investigators were focusing on suspicious transactions in the bank’s wealth management division between 2013 and 2018. The criminal investigation into the case was later dropped, but Deutsche Bank paid €15mn for shortcomings in money-laundering controls.

In October 2020, Frankfurt prosecutors fined the bank €13.5mn for the belated reporting of suspicious transactions it processed for Danske Bank’s Estonian branch.