Deutsche searched in money laundering probe over Panama Papers | Hacker News Reader

Deutsche searched in money laundering probe over Panama Papers

reuters.com

129 pointssahin42 comments

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This is about Deutsche Bank.

As a German, this headline reads like "Germans searched...", so I was confused for a moment.

I'm not German but this headline irked me. They could have just used the full name of the bank.

They use "Deutsche" and "Danske" as a shorthand throughout the article itself, too.

> They use "Deutsche" [...] as a shorthand throughout the article itself, too.

No. They do not. At least the version I am reading.

It is as if the author did not know this is shorthand and not the complete name of the bank. Kind of taking bank out of “Bank of America” vs “The CapitalOne bank (...)”

I (as a German) was not. Reading "Deutsche", "Money Laundering" and "Searched" in one line made obviously clear what was meant. In my bubble, this institution is a synonym for organized crime.

As a Polish person both your and GP's user names caught me off guard somewhat.

I, for one, are reminded of a most excellent Polish vodka by your parent's user name.

Ah yes, one of the very few brands that wasn't taken over by foreign competition.

To be honest I don't remember if I ever tried it - emphasis on remember.

If you are into mean spirits(pun intended) I recommend "Śliwowica łącka", although to try it you'd have hike the mountains od Lesser Poland because this type of liquor is technically illegal and available mostly in that region.

Is that like the Slivovitz you can find in the balkans? If so, the homebrew stuff is definitely tops (if you have relatives who still distill their own) but there's serviceable mass-market stuff you can get in some US liquor stores.

More or less, but has more of that barely-made-it-through-the-snowstorm taste.

Highlanders usually brew it, but I heard that given that it's not legal there are a lot of counterfeits in circulation.

I guess my family has some roots in the parts of Prussia that used to be German and are now Polish. I'm not aware of any Polish ancestors or siblings of mine, though.

Deutschebank has a sordid and questionable history with Donald Trump among others, so the sentiment is shared outside your bubble as well.

It's funny - it is for most people. Yet the institution isn't under investigation, merely two employees are:

> > Investigators are looking into the activities of two unnamed Deutsche Bank employees

That's funny.

They're looking at two people in their capacity as DB employees. DB is very much under investigation here.

This is getting very nitpicky here but "DB" usually means Deutsche Bahn. I'm not German (working in Germany though) so I could be wrong.

edit: Google agrees - https://www.google.de/search?q=db , although db.com is Deutsche Bank. Hmm. Never mind.

You're correct (inside Germany at least). db.de is the Deutsche Bahn.

Might just be a reflection of my finance background - many people on Wall Street call it DB, I'm assuming because it's their stock ticker.

I worked there, and I can confirm that we called it "DB" or "Deutsche".

I don't know, that's like saying "General investigated for emission scandal". General what? Motors? Electric? Ulysses S Grant?

Nah. German here, too, and I also knew immediately that it was referring to the Deutsche Bank.

In contrast to “General”, I don’t know of too many things prefixed with “Deutsche” that have been relevant in international media. The rest of the headline removes any doubt if there was any.

I don't know, I immediately thought Telekom.

Same here. Imagine a headline "America searched in money laundering probe", omitting the "Bank of" from "Bank of America".

It's factually wrong and misleading. Please correct the title.

You are comparing a name that is not parallel. If it was American Airlines, it's not unthinkable for a headline to read "American searched...".

I was just as confused, especially since there are many other organisations with names starting with "Deutsche" (As a German I happen to know a few).

If you're wondering why they just called it "Deutsche": This is a popular abbreviation in financial circles.

It also seems like the article has been fixed. I'd have liked clearer info on which country they were searched in up-front (since HN is US-Centric at first I suspected their American offices).

As a non-German, Deutsche + nefarious financial issue meant Deutsche Bank

Isn't this a bit late? Surely everything incriminating has been burned by now?

And also, how much is even stored locally on paper these days? I wonder how much sense these kinds of razzias still make.

Absolutely scary amounts of the information associated with private wealth management is still paper-based. Secondly, banks have huge internal complexity of systems and limited ability to coordinate people. Whether or not DB were doing this, it's highly likely there is a lot of evidence.

>Absolutely scary amounts of the information associated with private wealth management is still paper-based.

Can confirm. I was an AML Officer for a pretty substantial bank that focused on private wealth management. The lack of technology would truly horrify most HN readers.

For example, the height of our technology was our "intranet" - a shared excel file with hyperlinks to other files on the shared drive.

A feature, not a bug: If you want to cheat the state, technology is your worst enemy. Paper trail too

You know that's very true. If you can't present a file because it's "lost" (which happened not infrequently) the regulators don't know whether you've done your due diligence or not and you get a slap on the wrist for deficient paperwork. On the other hand, if your files demonstrate inadequate due diligence you're in for quite a bit of trouble.

> Isn't this a bit late?

If the culprits knew that there was information about their activities in the papers and stopped at that time then yes, it's a bit late. Nothing in the article say that though.

> how much is even stored locally on paper these days?

Depends, the article also says the police took electronic data. My guess is that there's likely to be a reasonable amount of both worth searching.

Paper would be the easy part (to destroy).

The hard part is electronic data. I work in a large Enterprise, no chance that even a simple email would vanish completely (it's definitely on several backup servers, tapes and whatnot I have no access to).

Add to this that financial institutions have very stringent regulatory requirements about archiving all their communications, including chat and email.

Trying to game those archives would get them into so much hot water with just about any regulator that I can't really imagine it.

Any bank may have dodgy employees that try to game the system. But without institutional support by a multitude of people and departments you could never erase such data. And I just don't see that happening.

Trying to destroy electronic records in a bank is so much a red flag that it would expose the person attempting it immediately. And then you'd find another copy somewhere.

The key to a successful fraud is usually producing more records in order to make something seem legit.

Such a search usually works by "please provide us with all relevant documents and copies of data" and only to a small degree by officers opening cabinets and taking whatever they find. If the confiscated documents show that large parts are missing or manipulated the charges for not complying with rules on record keeping and the negative impression on the main case are typically worse for the organization than the harm by those bad documents.

For individuals who might be responsible the interests might be different - they won't like documents referring to them specifically.

And also mind: The authorities are also required to evaluate documents in benefit of the defendant, thus to some degree there is self-interest to share stuff for that reason.

Matt Levine has a fun take on this: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-29/watch-...

(Search “raid”)

PROTIP: If you are having trouble opening a bank account for your blockchain company, use these headlines to find banks that just dgaf

Isn't Deutsche Bank the only bank that will still do business with Trump?

Correct.

https://www.ft.com/content/8c6d9dca-882c-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45...

Not sure if they're the only bank that will lend but he certainly owes them a bundle of money: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-28/mnuchin-s...

"According to an analysis by Bloomberg, Trump now owes Deutsche around $300m. He has four large mortgages, all issued by Deutsche’s private bank. The loans are guaranteed against the president’s properties: a new deluxe hotel in Washington DC’s old Post Office building, just round the corner from the White House; his Chicago tower hotel; and the Trump National Doral Miami resort."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/16/deutsche-ban...

And this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/31/deutsche-ba...

And this: https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-donald-trump-needs-a-loan-...

And well, you know where this all goes...

> And well, you know where this all goes...

Go on, spill the beans for HN's international visitors?

> his Chicago tower hotel;

Coincidence? The lawyer that handles tax matters for this property had his office raided by the FBI today:

https://cltv.com/2018/11/29/federal-agents-raid-office-of-po...

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