Settlement in sight in CFTC’s case against Deutsche Bank

Officials at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have reached a provisional settlement with Deutsche Bank over alleged swap data reporting violations, according to a Manhattan federal court filing.

The settlement, which is subject to further approval from the CFTC, relates primarily to the German lender’s alleged mishandling of a 2016 system outage. The case documents also reference reporting failures that allegedly led to potentially hundreds of thousands of violations of CFTC regulations between 2013 and 2015.

The bank has neither admitted nor denied the allegations. The parties are scheduled to appear at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York with an update on 24 January 2020.

DOJ steps up Deutsche Bank probe

US authorities are deepening their investigation into whether Deutsche Bank channelled dirty money into the US as part of a massive laundering scheme in the Baltics, according to Reuters.

The US Justice Department is reportedly cooperating with Estonian and Frankfurt state prosecutors to examine payment-processing arrangements between the German bank and Denmark's largest lender, Danske Bank.

The investigation follows revelations in 2018 that Danske Bank potentially facilitated more than $200 billion in suspicious payments, via its branch in Estonia, from Russia and former Soviet states.

Airbus fires employees over espionage allegations

Aerospace and defence company Airbus has fired 16 employees accused of industrial espionage in relation to projects with the German military, according to Deutsche Welle.

Sources at Airbus reportedly confirmed in September that German prosecutors were investigating dozens of employees at the company’s Munich-based cybersecurity division. They said the allegations concerned the 2018 theft of classified documents, including details of a communications system, during two projects with the country’s armed forces.

German News channel Welt reported that one of the employees concerned was a department head.

The company said in a statement it is “fully cooperating with relevant authorities to resolve the matter.”

NAB failed to properly screen transactions for a decade

The National Australia Bank failed to adequately screen thousands of transactions that could have violated sanctions and the country’s money laundering law, according to The Australian.

Documents seen by the newspaper reportedly evince systemic compliance failures at the bank, including improper screening of accounts and failure to correctly monitor customers transacting in sanctioned countries.

NAB said it is cooperating with authorities in the matter.

Earlier in November 2019, the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre accused Westpac bank of failing to report more than 23 million high-risk transactions in violation of the country’s anti-money laundering and terrorism financing law. In some cases, it is suspected of facilitating child exploitation payments.