The Corrupt Trump Iceberg Remains Hidden And Unpunished
0429blog24
Trump’s known corruption pales with his unknown corruption that is surely the tip of a very dirty iceberg that includes his yearslong, sordid relationship with Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse, two of the largest banks in the world.
His links with Deutsche Bank were central to trump’s conviction this year on financial fraud charges and a fine of more than $355 million. Trump was found to have lied about his wealth on financial statements in order to secure tens of millions of dollars in loans.
Numerous issues remain publicly unresolved regarding trump’s relationship with the two banks.
While trump was a toxic pariah to most banks, Deutsche Bank had a ravenous appetite for risk and was the only major financial institution to continue lending after trump’s finances took a serious nosedive in the 1990s. Deutsche Bank lent trump and his businesses more than $2.5 billion and, when he became president, the bank held more than $300 million in trump’s debt.
At around this time, in the late 1990s, Deutsche Bank plowed ahead to beef up its investment-banking division. The global financial behemoth recruited Goldman Sachs traders including Justin Kennedy, the son of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and Mike Offit, the son of the noted writer Sidney Offit.
Justin Kennedy was trump’s banker at a time when Deutsch Bank had loaned future president more than $2.5 billion since 1998; and when Deutsch Bank was fined $630 million for a $10 billion Russian money laundering scheme in 2017.
Offit arranged the earliest loans for trump at Deutsche Bank, including one for hundreds of millions to build his Trump Marina casino in Atlantic City. The loan was canceled after it was discovered that the signature of the credit officer who approved the deal had been forged. Offit was never accused of forgery but he was fired months later.
In past years, Deutsche Bank valued trump’s net worth $2 billion less than trump himself did, yet still granted him a loan.
Anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank flagged multiple transactions involving trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, from 2016 and 2017. Neither members of the trump family were ever prosecuted for money laundering.
In 2019, the FBI investigated Deutsche Bank’s handling of “suspicious activity reports” related to problematic transactions, including those linked to Jared Kushner. A suspicious activity report is made by a financial institution to counter possible money laundering, financing of terrorism and other financial crimes.
In past years, Deutsche Bank has paid U.S. and European authorities hundreds of millions in fines for its role in money laundering schemes.
Deutsche Bank had total assets of $1,480.22 billion as of 2022. The institution is a German multinational investment bank and financial services company. It has a history spanning over 150 years and is considered a Global Systemically Important Bank (G-SIB). G-SIBs are considered crucial financial institutions whose failure could trigger a financial crisis. They are otherwise known as “too big to fail.”
Credit Suisse had total assets of $771,55 billion as of 2022. It is a Swiss multinational investment bank and financial services provider and is a G-SIB.
The Trump Organization, fronted by his two older sons, owes Deutsche Bank about $340 million in outstanding loans. After trump filed a series of bankruptcies in the 1990s, Deutsche Bank was the only bank willing to give trump money.
In 2003, a Deutsche Bank team was hired to sell bonds on behalf of Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. The sales team managed to sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of bonds but a year later Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts defaulted on the bonds.
Trump later visited Deutsche Bank’s commercial real estate unit and applied for another loan to build a 92-story skyscraper in Chicago, the Trump International Hotel and Tower. Trump told Deutsche Bank his net worth was about $3 billion, but a review of his finances concluded he was worth about $788 million. Trump was awarded the loan.
Deutsche Bank propped up trump’s companies for two decades before it cut its ties days after the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by trump supporters. Deutsche Bank announced it would no longer do business with the disgraced president.
Founded in 1870, Deutsche Bank had close ties with the Nazi regime, helping to finance construction of critical infrastructure and concentration camps. The bank also provided funding for the company that made poison gas and sold gold internationally that the Nazis had extracted from the teeth of Jews, to raise hard currency for the Nazis.
Three Deutsche Bank employees, William Broeksmit, Thomas Bowers and Justin Kennedy, were largely responsible for approving a $2 billion loan to trump and a friend, Jeffrey Epstein.
In 2014, Broeksmit killed himself, leaving a suicide note that he looked back on his career “with shame.” Broeksmit also left paperwork tying him to the bank’s unit which had been accused of laundering some $10 billion of Russian oligarch money along with more than $400 million in questionable loans to Trump.
In 2019, Bowers also died of an apparently suicide. He was 55. According to published reports, Bowers signed off on trump loans and was the gatekeeper for financial documents for the bank’s wealthiest customers. Bowers previously worked as Deutsche Bank’s head of their U.S. Private Wealth Management division.
Broeksmit’s son, Val, a whistleblower, died mysteriously last year in Los Angeles. He was 46. The police said they found no sign of trauma or foul play. The medical examiner said the cause remained undetermined.
In 2019, Broeksmit was reported to have handed over hundreds of documents to the FBI while they were investigating ties between Deutsche Bank and trump. The documents had been left behind by Broeksmit’s father, Bill.
In 2005, Kennedy helped secure nearly $700 million in loans for trump to construct a skyscraper in Chicago. Kennedy, who ran the German bank’s commercial real estate team, was close with the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner.
Kennedy’s job as the trump connection with Deutsch Bank fueled rumors over the sudden resignation in 2018 of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Kennedy, 81, was replaced by his former law clerk, Brett Kavanaugh. Kennedy had been a critical swing vote on the court as he embraced liberal views on gay rights, abortion and the death penalty but helped conservatives trim voting rights, block gun control measures and unleash campaign spending by corporations. Kavanaugh’s assent to the court brought another conservative voice, leading to the court’s conservative majority and reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision.
One unproven conspiracy theory implied that trump leveraged his financial connections with Justin Kennedy’s and alleged involvement in loans to Russia and potentially to the money laundering. The goal was to convince the justice to retire ahead of the November 2018 mid-term elections so that he could be replaced by trump with a conservative justice.
During Kennedy’s tenure, Deutsche Bank became trump’s most important lender, dispensing well over $1 billion in loans to him for the renovation and construction of skyscrapers in New York and Chicago at a time other mainstream banks were wary of doing business with him because of his troubled business history.
Around the time that trump was sworn in as president, Deutsche Bank was fined $630 million for its involvement in a $10 billion Russian money laundering scheme. Deutsche Bank’s records were later subpoenaed as part of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.
Justin Kennedy began working at Deutsche in 1998 as the managing director and global head of Real Estate Capital Markets, a role he held until leaving in 2009. Kennedy oversaw and approved major real estate loans given through the bank, including multiple loans made to trump for his real estate enterprise.
Justice Kennedy’s other son, Gregory, is a managing director of Credit Suisse. The justice recused himself in 2007 from a major antitrust case involving Credit Suisse because of his son’s employment.
In 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc. was suffering mounting losses. The company turned to Credit Suisse First Boston. In return for a $400 million loan, Credit Suisse received a 65 percent stake in the Atlantic City casino.
Credit Suisse has been implicated in various scandals including helping to hide some of the $5 billion to $10 billion stolen by the Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda.
In 2022, a whistleblower leaked thousands of corporate files that showed relationships between Credit Suisse and the hidden wealth of clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes.
In May 2014, Credit Suisse was fined $2.6 billion after the firm pleaded guilty to helping some of its American clients evade taxes by concealing their wealth through offshore shell companies.
The largest shareholder of Credit Suisse was a Chicago-based investment firm, Harris Associates, which is owned by French bank Natixis, the seventh largest bank in Europe. Natixis was mentioned during trump’s fraud trial involving potential funding terms from Capital One for the Old Post Office project, which was renovated as the Trump International Hotel in 2016. In testimony, Jared Kusher said he could show the deal to Natixis because he thought they’d give the trump organization better terms.
As of January 25, 2023, Saudi National Bank, was an anchor investor in Credit Suisse with a 10 per cent stake. The Qatar Investment Authority boosted its stake in the Credit Suisse Group to 6.87 per cent while Harris Associates holdings fell below 3 percent. Swiss bank UBS purchased Credit Suisse in March 2023 for more than $3 billion.
Saudi National Bank is the largest bank in Saudi Arabia. In March,
the Trump Organization and Saudi developer Dar Global unveiled the planned $200 million Trump International Villas, a luxury residential development.
Qatari royalty meanwhile recently invested about $50 million in Newsmax, a strongly, pro-trump network.