Wednesday, July 8, 2020
NY Department of Financial Services and Deutsche Bank - Jeffrey Epstein
The NY Department of Financial Services entered into a Consent Order with Deutsche Bank AG (NY Branch) and Deutsche Bank Trust Company America with the Bank agreeing "to pay $150 million in penalties" "for significant compliance failures in connection with the Bank's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and correspondent banking relationships with Danske Bank Estonia and FBME Bank." The press release notes that "[t]his agreement marks the first enforcement action by a regulator against a financial institution for dealings with Jeffrey Epstein." "
"Superintendent Lacewell said. 'In each of the cases that are being resolved today, Deutsche Bank failed to adequately monitor the activity of customers that the Bank itself deemed to be high risk. In the case of Jeffrey Epstein in particular, despite knowing Mr. Epstein’s terrible criminal history, the Bank inexcusably failed to detect or prevent millions of dollars of suspicious transactions.'"
It is a fascinating consent decree with details of alleged suspicious banking activities. One item stated in the Consent decree is "[t]he interpretation was exemplified by a later email exchange in March of 2017, when a member of the transaction monitoring team responded to an alert about payments to a Russian model and Russian publicity agent, stating, '[s]ince this type of activity is normal for this client it is not deemed suspicious.'"
In the Consent decree one sees a good number of unnamed individuals (Co-conspirator 1, 2, and 3; US Bank -1; Relationship Manager -1; Executive -1 and 2; AML Officer -1 and 2; Coverage Team Member -1; Accountant -1; AML Compliance Director-1; Attorney -1; Offshore Company -1).
(esp)
https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/whitecollarcrime_blog/2020/07/ny-department-of-financial-services-and-deutsche-bank-jeffrey-epstein.html