US Fed slaps $186 mn fine on Deutsche Bank over unsafe practices

These fines, announced by the Fed on Wednesday, are part of a series of penalties imposed on the bank in recent years for breaching anti-money laundering regulations.

The Fed stated that the fine was levied on Deutsche Bank's New York branch due to insufficient progress in remedying the issues identified in the 2015 and 2017 consent orders concerning money laundering and sanctions violations.

The bank was also fined for inadequate anti-money laundering controls and governance processes in its dealings with Danske Bank's Estonian branch, through which it processed over $267 billion in transactions between 2007 and 2015, according to the Fed.

In addition to the recent fine, Deutsche Bank had previously paid nearly $630 million in 2017 to settle investigations conducted by the United States and the United Kingdom regarding Russian equity trades.

Furthermore, in the same year, the bank was fined an additional $41 million by the Federal Reserve for non-compliance with anti-money laundering practices.

Deutsche Bank has also been penalized for a host of other failures over the past few years.

Further, Deutsche Bank reached a settlement last year with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in which it agreed to pay $200 million due to electronic record-keeping failures.

In July 2020, the bank agreed to a settlement of $150 million with the New York Department of Financial Services, resolving allegations of compliance failures related to its association with Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier.

Additionally, in 2017, Deutsche Bank was fined $7.2 billion in the United States as a resolution to lawsuits stemming from its involvement in the "subprime" mortgage crisis, which played a significant role in the global financial crisis.

These various penalties highlight the bank's history of compliance failures and its legal and financial repercussions resulting from misconduct and inadequate practices.