A statue is seen next to the logo of Germany's Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach
New York: Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $630m in fines for organising $10bn in sham trades that could have been used to launder money out of Russia, the latest in a string of penalties that have hammered the German lender's finances.
In two detailed reports, US and British regulators criticised the bank for not knowing the customers involved or the source of money for the trades, which helped buoy revenue during a slowdown following the global financial crash.
The scheme involved so-called mirror trades carried out between 2011 to 2015 - for instance, buying Russian stocks in roubles for a client and selling the identical value of a security for US dollars for a related customer.
The New York Department of Financial Services outlined a web of trades "converting roubles into dollars through security trades that had no economic purpose" and stretched from Moscow, London and New York to Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands. The regulator said the bank had missed numerous opportunities to prevent the scheme.
