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> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-12/deutsche-bank-frankfurt-headquarters-raided-in-co2-trades-probe.html
> Deutsche Bank Says Co-CEO Fitschen Subject of CO2 Probe
> By Karin Matussek, Annette Weisbach & Nicholas Comfort - Dec 12, 2012
> 1:42 PM ET
> Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) <http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/DBK:GR> co-Chief
> Executive Officer Juergen Fitschen<http://topics.bloomberg.com/juergen-fitschen/>
> and Stefan Krause <http://topics.bloomberg.com/stefan-krause/>, the
> firm’s chief financial officer, are subjects of a tax probe involving the
> sale of carbon-emission certificates that led to five arrests and police
> raids on the lender’s Frankfurt offices.
> Fitschen and Krause’s approval of value-added tax statements for 2009 is
> being reviewed by prosecutors, Deutsche Bank said today in an e-mailed
> statement. Any errors in the document were corrected in a timely manner,
> the bank said. Prosecutors say the correction was too late, the lender said.
> The bank’s headquarters were searched and prosecutors are investigating 25
> employees, Guenter Wittig, a spokesman for the Frankfurt General
> Prosecutor, said in a statement. Five workers were arrested over
> obstruction of justice and money laundering<http://topics.bloomberg.com/money-laundering/> allegations,
> he said. He declined to identify any suspects.
> “There’s suspicion the bank employees withheld evidence from the
> authorities and failed to report potential money laundering,” Wittig said,
> in reference to the obstruction of justice portion of the case. The bank
> was previously raided in 2010 as part of the case.
> Global investment banks are the subject of probes from Japan<http://topics.bloomberg.com/japan/>
> to Canada <http://topics.bloomberg.com/canada/> as regulators intensify
> their scrutiny of the industry. At Deutsche Bank, the CO2 probe adds to
> subpoenas and litigation stretching from alleged rigging of interbank
> lending rates to claims the bank misrepresented products tied to U.S.
> mortgages.
> Police Vehicles
> Tax inspectors carrying computer equipment and files were seen entering
> elevators at the bank’s headquarters in downtownFrankfurt<http://topics.bloomberg.com/frankfurt/>
> today. About 20 police vehicles, including two large buses, were parked
> outside. About 10 police cars were in front of Deutsche Bank’s premises
> hosting the trading floor in the financial district.
> The search is part of a probe against individuals, bank spokesman Armin
> Niedermeier said. “Deutsche Bank continues to fully cooperate with the
> authorities.”
> Deutsche Bank reversed earlier gains after issuing the statement to fall<http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/DBK:GY>
> 0.1 percent to 34.275 euros at the close of trading in Frankfurt. The
> shares have gained 16 percent this year.
> ‘More Litigation’
> “While crimes like this could happen at any company, the world’s banks are
> facing ever more litigation,” said Christian Hamann<http://topics.bloomberg.com/christian-hamann/>,
> an analyst with Hamburger Sparkasse<http://topics.bloomberg.com/hamburger-sparkasse/>
> who recommends investors sell Deutsche Bank shares. “In hindsight, one
> could always say that the bank’s control systems could have been better.”
> Fitschen, 64, the longest-serving employee on the management board, became
> head of Deutsche Bank’s operations in Germany in 2005 and retained that
> role when he took over as co- CEO with Anshu Jain, 49, in June. Krause, 50,
> joined the management board in April 2008 and was named CFO in October of
> that year, according to the bank’s website<https://www.db.com/medien/en/content/press_releases_2008_3844.htm>
> .
> Naming Fitschen as a suspect is a part of a strategy by prosecutors to
> “increase the degree of suffering” at Deutsche Bank, saidPeter Haas<http://www.steuerrecht.ph/dr_peter_haas_strafrecht.html>,
> a tax attorney from Bochum, Germany <http://topics.bloomberg.com/germany/>,
> who isn’t involved in the case.
> “The legal issue is terribly simple -- you have to declare taxes
> correctly,” Haas said. “Fitschen isn’t filling out the forms himself, of
> course, he has an army of people handling the details.”
> Libor Hearing
> Deutsche Bank has set aside cash reserves to pay for any financial damages
> associated with the London interbank offered rate legal probes, Deutsche
> Bank’s chief of compliance Stephan Leithner said Nov. 28 at a Libor hearing
> of the Finance Committee of the German Parliament. An internal
> investigation established misconduct by individual employees, though no
> wrongdoing by current or former members of the board in the Libor case, he
> said, repeating a statement the bank made in July.
> Six men linked to small trading companies were convicted of tax evasion<http://topics.bloomberg.com/tax-evasion/>
> by a Frankfurt court a year ago in a case tied to the sale of
> carbon-emission certificates to Deutsche Bank. The lender, which bought the
> securities, should have known they were designed to illegally evade
> value-added tax, Presiding Judge Martin Bach said at the time.
> The lender decided not to claim back about 310 million euros ($406
> million) of VAT refunds as the case evolved. Earlier last year, Deutsche
> Bank made a provision in that amount as a “precautionary measure on legal
> advice” and reserved the right to reclaim the tax at a later date, a
> position the bank subsequently gave up.
> 500 Police
> Raids were also conducted in Berlin and Dusseldorf, Wittig said today.
> About 500 federal police and tax investigators were involved. The
> authorities also raided private homes.
> The prosecutors said last year they’re investigating as many as 170
> people, seven of whom work at Deutsche Bank. The scheme deprived the
> government of 300 million euros of income, the court said in a December
> 2011 ruling.
> The case is part of the biggest crackdown on emissions- related tax crimes
> since Europe <http://topics.bloomberg.com/europe/> opened the
> cap-and-trade system in 2005. German authorities enlisted assistance from
> 10 countries in 2010 and froze 100 million euros in funds as part of the
> probe.
>
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