Stephan Wilken, Head of Anti Financial Crime and Deutsche Bank’s Group Anti Money Laundering Officer, and Dr. Jens Fürhoff, Head of Money Laundering Prevention at the Bundesanstalt für Finanzdienstleistungsaufsicht (Federal Financial Supervisory Authority), testified today at a hearing in the European Parliament’s Special Committee TAX3 (Financial Crime, Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance) and debated with MEPs Deutsche Bank’s involvement in money laundering and tax evasion.
The spokesperson for Bündnis 90/Die Grünen in the European Parliament, Sven Giegold, said:
“Deutsche Bank refuses to provide information. It refused more persistently than any other bank in the European Parliament to make concrete statements on individual cases of money laundering. It is disrespectful towards the European Parliament to keep the MEPs so much in the dark. Even beyond individual cases: the money laundering commissioner Wilken was not prepared or in a position to quantify the legal risks from financial crime. He referred to the financial statement instead. Likewise, he could not or would not name how many employees had to resign because of involvement in financial crime. He says only vaguely that there were very few of them. The hearing was a missed opportunity to regain public trust.
The appearance of BaFin was poor show. BaFin failed to explain why it was unable to uncover the major money laundering scandals of recent years. For these serious failures of BaFin, I still expect an explanation. We expect a clear strategy from the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority as to how it intends to meet the high demands of the EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive in the future. The largest country in the euro zone must not remain a paradise for organised financial crime.”
Replies of Deutsche Bank to written questions:
Teil 1: https://sven-giegold.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DeutscheBank_replies_first-set-questions.pdf
Teil 2:
https://sven-giegold.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/DeutscheBank_replies_additional-questions.pdf
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