The Deutsche Bank and Trump Connection

In the normal course of the Trump world, this might appear as some low level issue that many bank's have to deal with daily. That is, should a customer's financial transactions that are suspicious, for whatever reason, be reported to a governmental agency, even if, the customer is a VIP?

If Joe Blow banked with Deutsche and its internal regulators detected something odd, something suspicious, would they report it. Odds are, yes. For a bank, it is CYA, even if it ends up being nothing. However, with a VIP, such as the Trump empire, whose owner is the President of the United States, and has done numerous business transactions that banks make money through, this may be not the case. After all, a bank surely does not want to lose the business of a major player like Trump Enterprises.

So, when lower level Deutsche Bank monitors disclosed that several Trump and Kushner transactions had been flagged as suspicious in nature back in 2016 and 2017, these reports followed a chain of command to higher levels where nothing more happened. The suspicion was focused on money-laundering, something the bank was under investigation in the past involving certain clients. These whistle blowers remained silent until now. Of course, the bank clearly has stated nothing more was done because it was determined the transactions were not nefarious.

But is this just spin?

Why would this bank report suspicious transactions of POTUS and Kushner if it would hurt their profits made from business loans and deals with the Trump organization? The bank would say there is nothing in the allegations. But we know how much Trump lies and no doubt his bank of choice does also, since they were under investigation. This is the only bank, despite Trump's tweets, that would be willing to loan Trump money in the 90s and after due to the billions he lost in bad business decisions and projects before he started to license his name to products. Trump has lost over $1 billion in the 90s, yet Deutsche Bank remained lending him money knowing what gamble he was. Why?

Maybe because there was some sort of Russian connection as Trump sought financing when he pursued a Moscow Trump tower just before he was elected into office. The bank does have Russian clients, so it is not beyond some potential of suspicious business transactions via the bank. One of the bank's whistle blowers was fired when she tried to push the suspicious transaction through higher bank regulators. Deutsche Bank now has an outside auditing firm, KPMG, looking into the bank's money-laundering accusations, which also involves Denmark's Danske Bank. The optics for the bank could not be worse.

Naturally, Trump, Kushner, and their bank, deny anything and everything regarding this news, as to be expected. But, what is most concerning to those who are troubled by this news is that President Trump has filed a lawsuit to prevent his bank from releasing ANY records if his loans and transactions. This will likely fail because a federal judge has ordered his accounting firm to hand over Trump's financial records to Congress!

Usually, any person truly innocent of wrongdoing, of any crime, or transaction, would not spend more money filing a lawsuit to prevent his bank or other entity from disclosing information. You can cite all the reasons you want, but if a person has NOTHING to worry about when it comes to legal activities, then, the information should be available as there is nothing to hide.

Unfortunately, our president has a guilty conscience and he is showing it. The Deutsche Bank issue is just starting and Trump's reputation is on the line. I believe the Courts will not favor his arguments.