US Fed fines Deutsche Bank $186 mn over 'unsafe' practices

The US Federal Reserve has fined German lender Deutsche Bank $186 million for sanctions violations and what it called "unsafe and unsound" banking practices at its US subsidiaries.

The fines announced by the Fed on Wednesday are the latest in a string of financial penalties levied against the German bank on both sides of the Atlantic for violating anti-money laundering laws over the last few years.

The Fed said on Wednesday that it had fined the bank's New York branch after concluding the bank had "made insufficient remedial progress under the 2015 and 2017 consent orders," relating to money laundering and sanctions violations.

The bank was also fined for what the Fed called "unsafe and unsound" practices in its relationship with the Estonian branch of the Denmark-based Danske Bank.

Deutsche Bank had "deficient anti-money laundering internal controls and governance processes," in its relationship with Danske Bank, for which it processed more than $267 billion in transactions between 2007 and 2015, according to the Fed.

The fine unveiled on Wednesday comes after the German lender shelled out almost $630 million in 2017 to end probes by the United States and the UK over Russian equity trades.

It was fined a further $41 million by the Fed in the same year for failing to comply with anti-money laundering practices.

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

Last year, it agreed to pay the US Securities and Exchange Commission $200 million over electronic record-keeping failures.

In July 2020, the bank agreed to pay $150 million to settle allegations brought by the New York Department of Financial Services for compliance failures connected to its work for the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

And in 2017, the bank was fined $7.2 billion in the United States to settle lawsuits over its role in the "subprime" mortgage crisis, which contributed to the global financial crisis.