The newspaper wrote on Sunday that the bank’s anti-money laundering specialists investigating the issue back then flagged “multiple transactions” involving legal entities controlled by Donald J. Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, recommending that the records be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog, CNN reported.
The Times, which spoke with five current and former Deutsche Bank employees, also said the nature of the transactions “was not clear,” though the report added that at least some of them involved “money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, which bank employees considered suspicious.”
Executives at Deutsche Bank, however, rejected the advice of their specialists, according to the Times, which reported that the recommendations were never filed with the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.
Former employee Tammy McFadden said she was terminated last year after raising concerns about the bank’s practices.
“You present them with everything, and you give them a recommendation, and nothing happens,” she said, adding that it is their way. “They are prone to discounting everything.”
The report is significant in part because Deutsche Bank has been one of the few big banks willing to lend money to the Trump Organization in recent years. Trump’s businesses have borrowed more than $300 million from Deutsche to finance a golf course in Florida and hotels in Chicago and Washington, according to financial disclosures and public filings from 2012 to 2015.
Trump is already embroiled in another scandal involving his refusal to produce his tax returns.
Democrats want his returns as part of their inquiry into possible conflicts of interest posed by his continued ownership of extensive business interests, both before and after his inauguration as president in 2016.
