According to foreign media reports, the headquarters of Deutsche Bank (Deutsche Bank) in Frankfurt, Germany, was jointly searched by the German police, prosecutors and financial regulators.It is understood that the German police have not disclosed the reasons for carrying out the operation, and it is not clear whether it is related to the financial sanctions imposed by the European Union on Russia.

Prosecutors said in a statement that the search warrant issued by the Frankfurt District Court suspected that unnamed Deutsche Bank employees might have violated the anti-money laundering law and declined to give further details.

Some foreign media said that Deutsche Bank had confirmed the "raid" search and said it was related to reports of suspicious activities related to money laundering, and added that this was an investigation that fully cooperated with the supervision of the authorities.

After the news, Deutsche Bank's US stock fell 3.52% on the day, and its share price fell to single digits. Deutsche Bank's latest US stock market capitalization is $20.33 billion (about 135.6 billion yuan). Deutsche Bank was once one of the five largest investment banks in the world, and its share price soared to $159 in 2007.

Deutsche Bank's first-quarter 2022 results show that net revenue in the first quarter was 7.328 billion euros (51.1 billion yuan), up 1 percent from a year earlier, while net profit was 1.227 billion euros (8.56 billion yuan), up 18.32 percent from a year earlier. The highest level since 2013, better than the market expected 1.12 billion euros.

Suspected of illegal money laundering

Recently, it was reported that the German Federal Police, criminal prosecutors and German financial institutions regulator BaFin raided Deutsche Bank's Frankfurt headquarters. Some German local media reported that the incident may be related to the bank's suspected involvement in money laundering.

According to public information, as the largest bank in Germany, Deutsche Bank was founded in 1870 and is headquartered in Frankfurt. The bank's latest results show that its profits grew by a high 17 per cent in the first quarter of this year.

After the Frankfurt headquarters was jointly searched by German police and prosecutors, a spokesman for the bank saidThe cause of the incident was that Deutsche Bank employees found that customers might be suspected of money laundering while handling a business and reported to the regulatory authorities in accordance with the regulations. The police and regulators immediately went to the bank to collect evidence with a search warrant issued by a judge. Deutsche Bank is fully cooperating with the investigation.

German authorities have raided Deutsche Bank's headquarters in Frankfurt because the country's largest bank is suspected of money laundering, the Guardian said. Officials from financial regulators, the federal police and the Frankfurt prosecutor's office raided the bank office on Friday morning local time-a landmark known locally as the Twin Towers, after obtaining a search warrant from the local court, the report said.

"this is the measure taken by the Frankfurt Prosecutor's Office to investigate suspicious activity reports (SAR) submitted by banks," the bank said in a statement. "Deutsche Bank is fully cooperating with the authorities. "

Banks and other financial institutions are required to submit SAR reports to law enforcement agencies when they suspect that customers may use their services for potential criminal activities. However, the submission of a SAR report does not mean that the customer is guilty of wrongdoing or requires the bank to stop doing business with the customer. The Deutsche Bank investigation may be related to the delay in the submission of the SAR report.

Get caught up in several compliance scandals

Foreign media said the raid was a blow to Christian Sewing, the bank's chief executive. Since taking office, he has promised to push for reforms, especially at the level of compliance.

The problem of money laundering has put Deutsche Bank in trouble in the past. Previously, Deutsche Bank was investigated and fined $700 million by the US Department of Justice for money laundering in 2018.

In 2018, 170 police officers carried out a two-day raid and Deutsche Bank staff were accused of helping wealthy clients evade taxes. The prosecutor later abandoned the investigation of the two employees but fined the lender for lack of compliance procedures. Deutsche Bank has been trying to repair its reputation after a series of scandals and contacts with controversial clients.

"We have greatly reduced our legal risk. Deutsche Bank said publicly in 2019 that it was strengthening internal controls and initiated a fundamental reform to improve bank compliance.

In recent years, Deutsche Bank has been attacked by regulators for a long time, especially in the level of anti-money laundering control.A few years ago, the British Financial Regulatory Authority again ordered Deutsche Bank to improve its compliance capacity. At that time, Germany's financial regulator expanded its regulatory scope and extended the term of office of the consulting firm KPMG as a special representative to monitor progress by lenders and strengthen internal controls in September 2018.

BaFin, Germany's federal financial regulator, also urged Deutsche Bank to implement obligations such as "further appropriate internal controls", safeguards and "compliance with due diligence" as soon as possible. In 2018, BaFin took an unusual step in Deutsche Bank to monitor the progress of money laundering controls. Last year, the BaFin ordered Deutsche Bank to issue further safeguards against capital loss, and money laundering and regulators expanded the scope of auditors' mandates. Deutsche Bank said it had increased resources to combat money laundering.

The bank was fined $630 million (£501 million) in 2017 after US and UK regulators accused the bank of failing to detect fraud worth up to $1 billion. Just two years ago, he was fined by the authorities for allegedly manipulating Libor interest rates between 2003 and 2007.

The move comes after a former employee of Deutsche Bank helped regulators in countries such as the UK and the US investigate Deutsche Bank and reported that the bank had improperly manipulated the London interbank offered rate, the largest bonus ever paid by a CFTC whistleblower.

The former employee got a bonus of 1.2 billion yuan for reporting.

Just last year, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that it had paid a bonus of nearly $200m (1.2 billion yuan) to a former Deutsche Bank employee, the largest bonus under the US whistleblower program.

Us authorities and regulators said that due to the timely provision of raw information by employees, it played an important role in the follow-up public investigation. This has led to successful enforcement actions by US federal and foreign regulators, as well as two related actions. CFTC said in a statement and did not disclose the whistleblower, his employer or related regulatory actions.

A person familiar with the matter told the foreign media thatThe employee's complaint is related to a $2.5 billion settlement paid by Deutsche Bank after a regulatory investigation into the manipulation of Libor.The London Interbank offered rate (Libor), an interest rate benchmark that underpins global finance, was found to have been manipulated by bankers a decade ago.

Kirby McInerney, the law firm, confirmed in a statement that the award-winning whistleblower was its client, who "provided a great deal of information, documentation and transaction information in 2012", sparking investigations by CFTC as well as US and foreign regulators into "manipulating key financial benchmarks used by banks around the world".