The New York Times is reporting today that Deutsche Bank has been raided over suspicions of money laundering by two unnamed employees. The bank has previously been critical of cryptocurrency as a means to take part in illegal activities, and crypto twitter hasn’t missed the opportunity to revel in the hypocrisy.
Two employees who were not identified but were revealed to be 50 and 46 are under investigation for a money laundering scheme tied to the recent release of the Panama Papers. It seems they may have been helping clients set up off shore accounts in order to avoid taxes, which is of course illegal.
It is true that the police is currently conducting an investigation at a number of our offices in Germany. The investigation has to do with the Panama Papers case. More details will be communicated as soon as these become known. We are cooperating fully with the authorities.
— Deutsche Bank (@DeutscheBank) November 29, 2018
As far as we are concerned, we have already provided the authorities with all the relevant information regarding Panama Papers. Of course, we will cooperate closely with the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt, as it is in our interest as well to clarify the facts.
— Deutsche Bank (@DeutscheBank) November 29, 2018
In recent years, we have proven that we fully cooperate with the authorities – and we will continue to do so.
— Deutsche Bank (@DeutscheBank) November 29, 2018
As Bitcoinist has pointed out, this comes as a bit of an irony as Deutsche Bank’s head of the department against financial crime, Philippe Vollot, has previously called out crypto for the same basic crimes:
“Governments and regulators should thoroughly look into this to ensure that cryptocurrencies have the same financial crime protection rules as traditional payment solutions.”
Many were legitimately concerned about this turn of events.
We're ont really worried whether you are cooperating with authorities, We're worried that you've probably cooperated too much with criminals – again!
— Inflationproof (@inflationproof) November 29, 2018
“We are cooperating fully with the authorities”. I always laugh at these statements. 1) You don’t have a choice. 2) You are cooperating now but there’s plenty of evidence that you misled global authorities for decades. So don’t pretend to be a model corporate citizen.
— ᴀʟᴘʜᴀ ᴢᴇᴛᴀ (@alphaazeta) November 29, 2018
I thought $crypto was supposed to be used for money laundering? Strange how the trustworthy institutions are actually the ones dealing in illicit cash.
— Oliver Knight (@KnightCoinRivet) November 29, 2018
Comments are off this post!