Panama Papers spur searches at Deutsche HQ

BERLIN— German authorities raided the offices of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, on Thursday over money laundering allegations. The public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt said about 170 officials were involved in searches at the company’s business premises.

The investigation is directed against two employees and other individuals who have so far not been identified. The public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt confirmed the investigation was based on details included in the Panama Papers, as they are known, and Offshore Leaks, a collaborative investigation

between the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and other media outlets that revealed money laundering practices across the globe.

“Numerous business documents” were obtained during the raid, the prosecutor’s office said.

“After an evaluation of the socalled ‘Offshore Leaks’ and ‘Panama Papers,’ ” Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office representative Nadja Niesen wrote in a statement, “the suspicion arose that Deutsche Bank AG was helping clients set up socalled ‘offshore companies’ in tax havens and that money connected to crimes was transferred to the accounts of Deutsche Bank AG.” Deutsche Bank failed to report those suspicious transactions, according to German prosecutors.

Prosecutors referred to a Deutsche Bank subsidiary registered in the British Virgin Islands. From there, 900 customers were allegedly served by the bank in 2016 alone.

In a statement emailed to the Washington Post, Deutsche Bank confirmed that the raid had taken place and stressed that the bank was co-operating with authorities.

“We have already provided the authorities with all the relevant information regarding Panama Papers,” Deutsche Bank said in the statement.

“Of course, we will co-operate closely with the public prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt, as it is in our interest as well to clarify the facts.”

In their statement, prosecu- tors alleged there were “sufficient indications” for the suspicious nature of those transactions before the 2016 release of the Panama Papers. Yet, bank officials did not report them.

The Panama Papers scandal was sparked by a dump of millions of financial documents from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca & Co. The documents revealed the existence of 214,488 secret offshore entities, based on financial spreadsheets, copies of passports, emails and corporate records from 1977 to 2015.