Deutsche Bank Cooperating With House Democrats Investigating Trump For Alleged Money-Laundering

Chairwomen of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) revealed Friday that attorneys for Deutsche Bank were cooperating with its committee members, providing documents detailing the president’s past dealings with the institution as they investigate for possible wrongdoing.

“We are very concerned about money laundering. We know that Deutsche Bank has had a reputation for money laundering for a long time,” Waters told MSNBC’s, Chris Hayes.

“We started sending letters to Deutsche Bank last year, and they were not responsive because they did not feel we had the authority to demand anything from them, the documents we wanted,” Waters stated. “But now that I am chairing this committee, the Democrats are in charge of the House, they have said they will cooperate.”

In 2017 the German-led bank was hit with fines amounting to roughly $630 million for its failure to detect and act on a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme that stretched across two continents involving branches in New York, Moscow, and Londen. A spokesman for the New York State Department of Financial services stated, at the time, that “The bank missed numerous opportunities to detect, investigate and stop the scheme due to extensive compliance failures, allowing the scheme to continue for years.”

President Donald Trump‘s relationship with the bank began in 1998 when major Wall Street firms suddenly cut ties with the business mogul following a series of ruinous ventures. Since then the Trump Organization has reportedly racked up close to $340 million in outstanding loans that were due to be repaid over the next few years, according to a Newsweek report.

Recently Bloomberg News stated that executives at the bank are apparently so concerned that the Trump Organization will default on its loans that they decided to cease business with him until he is out of office. Not so much concerned with the president’s creditworthiness but the p.r. nightmare that would ensue should they be forced to confiscate a sitting president’s assets.

“There’s a coordinated effort between all of us—the five different committees that we chair—I’m on Financial Services and of course we have Judiciary, Oversight, Ways and Means and Foreign Affairs,” Waters told Hayes in regards to Democrats investigating Trump. “We’re meeting so that we understand what each other are doing and so that we’re not necessarily bumping into each other.”

Article by Eric Silverman