The hunt on Deutsche Bank: what is the real reason?

Last Tuesday the US authorities (Federal Reserve) fined Deutsche Bank once again. Only in 2017 the total amount of fines applied to Deutsche Bank by the US Federal reserve rises to USD 466 million. The official and main reason is "money laundering control lapses".

Since the beginning of the Deutsche Bank crisis, the US authorities have played a central role on the exposure of the banks weaknesses in AML, a sort of witchcraft prosecution of the XXI century.

Deutsche Bank is a symbol of Germany, still the 10th in the Bank Ranking and has surely made some huge mistakes in its AML policies and procedures but the question is why now and why this continuous pursuit from the US authorities?

When we see the hardness on foreign (mostly European) banks and the smoother attitude towards the home banks we must think about the reasons beyond this different approach.

Our opinion isn't any sort of conspiracy theory but a pure factual analysis based on the comparison between the kind and amount of fines applied to European banks and the ones applied to US banks.

Deutsche Bank is going through the worst crisis of its history and even if we tend to recognize that the board has committed some failures or even "closed the eyes" to some suspicious transactions and didn't improve the correct measures to solve the known screening problems or deficiencies, fact is that the current weakness of the bank is being exposed and even exploited by this chase from the US authorities.

We will wait for the next chapters of this novel to see who is going or wants to take control over the German giant bank.

Disclaimer: This article is a personal opinion and cannot be in any way connected with the authors current employer.