Deutsche Bank, the bank that knew too much ... about Donald Trump's finances
US President Donald Trump on Monday decided to take Deutsche Bank to court to prevent it from collaborating with Congress. For twenty years, the German bank has been the main funder of the Trump empire.
No way. US President Donald Trump has no desire for Deutsche Bank to reveal his little financial secrets. On Monday, April 24, he joined his three children in taking legal action against the German banking giant to prevent it from delivering documents to Congress.
On April 15, the Democratic-dominated House of Representatives issued a subpoena to the German bank, as part of the parliamentary inquiry into the finances of the Trump real estate empire and into Russian interference during the campaign for the 2016 US presidential election.
Against winds, tides and bad financial fortunes
Elected officials did the same for other financial institutions such as JP Morgan, Capital One, Bank of America or Citigroup. But it is the Deutsche Bank case which is the most sensitive for the American president.
"These subpoenas are for the sole purpose of harassing Donald Trump, rummaging in every nook and cranny of his personal finances, his business and the personal information of the president and his family. [...] They have no other reasons. to be that political, "reacted the lawyers of the Trump Organization.
For twenty years, the German bank has financially supported the real estate magnate against all odds and bad financial fortunes, while recovering hefty interest on the loans granted. According to calculations by the Wall Street Journal, the establishment advanced it over $ 2.5 billion over the years, when most other American banks refused to do business with an entrepreneur who had gone bankrupt several times and whose positions became more and more controversial as his political ambitions became clearer.
The relationship between Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump begins with the meeting of two ambitions in 1998. That of the billionaire, eager to prove that his legendary "art of the deal" ("the art of negotiation", title of his flagship book ) had survived two bankruptcies, in 1991 and 1994. And that of the German bank which "was trying to make a name for itself on Wall Street in the 1990s", recalls the New York Times.
Perpetual need for money
To achieve this, the Frankfurt giant decides to take risks. The bank is hiring traders from Goldman Sachs to take care of the business real estate division. It is one of them, Mike Offit, who will agree, the first, to lend $ 125 million to Donald Trump to renovate the tower that the real estate mogul owns in Manhattan.
The businessman turns out to be a client in perpetual need of money. He asks for 300 million dollars to build a tower in front of the Unesco headquarters, then tens of millions more for a new casino in Atlantic City.
In 2005, Deutsche Bank agreed to lend him an additional $ 500 million to build a luxury skyscraper in Chicago. But German bankers will soon bite their fingers. Donald Trump is, in fact, struggling to sell the apartments in this new building and the 2008 financial crisis is not helping his affairs. He found himself unable to repay a maturity of $ 338 million, says the Wall Street Journal.
Judicial quack
The billionaire then decides to counter-attack. He takes Deutsche Bank to court on the grounds that the financial crisis was an "event of force majeure" which would exempt him from paying a single penny. As a bonus, he claims $ 3 billion from the German bank, which he accuses of being partly responsible for the subprime crisis.
Taken aback, the bank, in turn, sued Donald Trump to recover $ 40 million and the business real estate division of Deutsche Bank, which handled the affairs of the real estate mogul, decides to stop the fees.
But this legal quack will not discourage everyone at Deutsche Bank. After the signing, in 2010, of an amicable agreement between the bank and Donald Trump, he became a client of the discreet wealth management division of Deutsche Bank.
Between 2011 and 2016, the businessman continued to borrow more than a billion dollars to try to buy an American football team, build a luxury hotel in Washington and… repay part of the debt that he owed to Deutsche Bank.
It was not until 2016 that the management of the German bank changed its tune. In a lengthy investigation published in March 2018, the New York Times revealed that, in the bank's offices, "employees were warned that they could no longer use the name 'Trump' in their communications with the outside" for avoid drawing attention to the long relationship with a billionaire turned controversial president.
Too late. This link has not escaped the notice of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, who for two years investigated the relations of Donald Trump's campaign team and Russia. In this capacity, he interviewed several officials of the German bank. Democrats, meanwhile, are only too happy to get their hands on all the financial documents Deutsche Bank has had to amass over the years of a long and tumultuous relationship.
