A whistleblower has revealed that the brass of the only major bank willing to do business with President Trump covered up credible suspicious activity reports (SARs) about him and Jared Kushner.
Deutsche Bank is notorious for skirting the wrong side of the law when it comes to money laundering scandals, especially when the clients are Russian oligarchs. Perhaps coincidentally, they’re also the only major bank willing to do business with perpetual disaster Donald Trump, lending both he and his son-in-law’s family real estate companies billions of dollars over the past few years.
A bank employee discovered that the now-dissolved Trump Foundation and his fellow trust-fund baby turned White House senior advisor Jared Kushner both executed transactions that raised credible concerns about money laundering during the 2016 election and in 2017. When the whistleblower brought dossiers about Trump and, in particular, Kushner’s suspicious activities with Russians to her superiors, Deutsche Bank fired her. The New York Times reports:
Ms. Tammy McFadden, a longtime anti-money laundering specialist in Deutsche Bank’s Jacksonville office, said she had reviewed the transactions and found that money had moved from Kushner Companies to Russian individuals.
She concluded that the transactions should be reported to the government — in part because federal regulators had ordered Deutsche Bank, which had been caught laundering billions of dollars for Russians, to toughen its scrutiny of potentially illegal transactions.
Three Deutsche Bank employees confirmed the Times’ story today and said that the suspicious activity reports were killed to maintain the relationship with Jared Kushner.
In fact, the bank gave Kushner a $285 million loan just before the 2016 election.
Last January, Deutsche Bank said publicly that it would be willing to report Kushner’s transactions to federal banking regulators, but obviously, that was just public relations.
McFadden believed that the independent anti-money laundering experts at the bank would review her work and report it to the Treasury Department’s clearinghouse for those reports, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
In fact, its Jacksonville based Special Investigations Unit did look at its history with Trump and recommend the bank should file anti-money laundering SARs.
But Deutsche Bank routed the review back to the private banking division who handles Donald Trump’s accounts, where he worked the son of former Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy as his personal account representative until recently. Trump’s businesses have borrowed $2.5 billion from Deutsche Bank to fund prominent properties like the Washington Trump hotel and a Miami golf course.
Two bank employees told the Times that it was unusual to reject a series of requests to reports SARs about a high-profile client, but they were essentially worried that he would retaliate with a tweet or his official powers, even if all they did was complain about a late payment.
Meanwhile, the bank concocted an excuse to fire whistleblower McFadden in April 2018, mainly for doing her job and warning the bank’s higher-ups that it was heavily favoring “politically exposed persons” by not reporting their suspicious transactions.
But Tammy McFadden alerted the S.E.C and an alphabet soup of bank regulators who can all investigate her story.
It’s no wonder that the House Financial Services Committee led by Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) just subpoenaed Deutsche Bank last month to find out more about their relationship with President Trump. The bank had reportedly already been cooperating with House Dems, but today’s news adds a lot more smoke to what appears to be a real fire under the entire White House.
The President has a lot to fear from House Democrats revealing the truth about both his transactions with Deutsche Bank and the details of their relationship.
Original reporting by David Enrich at the New York Times.
