How Deutsche Bank Enabled A Dirty Offshore Bank To Move Dark Money
Deutsche Bank facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions for a corrupt Cyprus bank that served as a hub for illicit money from “the darkest corners of the criminal underworld”, a trove of secret documents obtained by BuzzFeed News reveals.
Deutsche – and its New York subsidiary under scrutiny for its loans to Donald Trump – provided a crucial bridge between FBME Bank and the global financial system, acting as its longstanding correspondent bank in the US and helping some of its most nefarious clients move illicit money into the West.
FBME was banned from using the dollar this year after losing a protracted legal battle with the US government – three years after the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, first moved to stop the bank sending “dirty funds through the U.S. financial system”.
FinCEN kept much of its evidence against FBME secret – but the files obtained by BuzzFeed News have exposed the Cyprus bank as a major conduit for funds linked to terrorism, organised crime, and chemical weapons, and revealed how blue-chip Western institutions enabled its activities. In recent days we disclosed how FBME’s ultra-powerful international law firms – including an attorney playing a key role in the Trump-Russia investigation – crusaded for the bank while accountants at two of the world’s biggest accounting firms signed off its activities, and we exposed a network of Kremlin-linked slush funds inside FBME funnelling money to shadowy people fronting for Syria's chemical weapons programme, organised crime, and ISIS.
more
https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomwarren/how-deutsche-processed-millions-for-a-dirty-bank?utm_term=.rb3O6JvQ9#.foxGoNDVr
