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No wonder Trump is targeting Schiff with his recent Twitter tirades.
Schiff knows what it means to “Follow The Money”.
Schiff also knows who was Trump’s “Lender of Last Resort”.
House Intelligence Panel Hiring Money-Laundering Sleuths
One of President’s biggest foes is taking steps to chase the Trump-Russia money trail.
by Betsy Woodruff, Spencer Ackerman, The Daily Beast — 11-21-2018
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The [House Intelligence] committee is looking to hire money-laundering and forensic accounting experts, three sources familiar with the plans confirm to The Daily Beast. One Democratic committee office said the purpose of the potential new hires is to examine unanswered financial questions about Trump and Russia, but their work could apply broadly across the panel’s intelligence oversight.
This indicates that likely chairman Adam Schiff’s stated interest in the intersection of financial crimes and intelligence threats isn’t just talk.
Schiff, a California Democrat, has said publicly and privately that he’s interested in President Donald Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank, the German financial giant that has been scorched for its connections to money-laundering. When other lenders were loath to lend money to Trump in the 1990s, Deutsche Bank stepped up and spotted him tons of cash. The president may still owe the bank up to $175 million, according to MarketWatch. Bringing on staffers with expertise in financial crimes would position the committee to pursue those questions.
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Deutsche Bank was caught up in a massive Money-Laundering scheme. A scheme that moved $6 billion out of Russia. A scheme that involved a Russian subsidiary. A Money-Laundering scheme that brought Deutsche under serious scrutiny and serious fines.
FCA fines Deutsche Bank £163 million for serious anti-money laundering controls failings
Press Releases, Financial Conduct Authority (U.K.) -- 31/01/2017
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has today fined Deutsche Bank AG (Deutsche Bank) £163,076,224 for failing to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering (AML) control framework during the period between 1 January 2012 and 31 December 2015. This is the largest financial penalty for AML controls failings ever imposed by the FCA, or its predecessor the Financial Services Authority (FSA).
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The failings allowed the front office of Deutsche Bank’s Russia-based subsidiary (DB Moscow) to execute more than 2,400 pairs of trades that mirrored each other (mirror trades) between April 2012 and October 2014.
The mirror trades were used by customers of Deutsche Bank and DB Moscow to transfer more than $6 billion from Russia, through Deutsche Bank in the UK, to overseas bank accounts, including in Cyprus, Estonia, and Latvia. [...]
A further $3.8 billion in suspicious “one-sided trades” also occurred. The FCA believes that some, if not all, of an additional 3,400 trades formed one side of mirror trades and were often conducted by the same customers involved in the mirror trading.
- Bank, Trump’s biggest lender, complies with special counsel’s request
by Stephanie Kirchgaessner, TheGuardian.com — Dec 17, 2017
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Instead, said Ryan Goodman, a New York law professor and former Pentagon counsel, it showed that Mueller was possibly examining whether the president could be compromised by Russian interests.
“Deutsche Bank relates to the Russia collusion investigation,” Goodman said.
He pointed to the bank’s known relationships with Russian oligarchs and its previous dealings in Moscow among reasons why Mueller would be interested in having access to Trump’s bank accounts. The president was in the past loaned about $300m by the bank. His indebtedness, Goodman said, means that Mueller will want to examine if there are any connections between Russia and the president’s financial vulnerabilities.
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The president has repeatedly criticised the Mueller investigation and this weekend alleged that the FBI’s reputation was “in tatters”. The attack followed the guilty plea of Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who is cooperating with federal investigators.
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Here’s a tip for Adam Schiff and his Intel-investigators:
Follow the Money. And then follow-up with these NY Real Estate reporters. They’ve had the inside-track on the ‘mogul’ Trump for years ...
Looking at Three Big Lenders’ CRE Portfolios Outside the Gateway
by Ely Razin, National Real Estate Investor -- Apr 18, 2017
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Still, it [Deutsche Bank] could stand to gain from its relationship with the Trump family. Some members of Congress have warned that President Donald Trump might give Deutsche Bank special favors, saying Deutsche “has been the only major Wall Street bank to continue to lend to Donald Trump and his entities in the wake of six Trump-business bankruptcies.” Indeed, Deutsche Bank has led or participated in loans totaling at least $2.5 billion since 1998 to companies with which he is affiliated, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis in March 2016.
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If I’m reading this next Realtor report correctly, the US Tax-payer may now be on the hook, for the unsecured loans, that Deutsche Bank generously floated Trump’s way, time and time again.
On the hook, to the tune of $300 Million — assuming Trump has an abrupt fall from ‘popularity’ … along with piles and piles of civil judgments and fines, sometime in the near future ...
Donald Trump still personally guarantees $300M in Deutsche Bank loans
by The Real Deal, New York Real Estate -- Mar 17, 2017
Deutsche Bank still hasn’t reached a deal to remove Donald Trump’s personal guarantees from around $300 million in real estate loans, more than three months after talks between the German lender and Trump’s associates were first reported.
With the guarantees still in place, the U.S. faces the unusual prospect of a foreign financial association going after a sitting U.S. president’s assets if he were to default.
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In 2012, Trump took out $125 million in loans from Deutsche Bank’s private banking group to finance his Trump National Doral Miami golf resort. According to filings with the federal election commission, the loan carries an interest rate of 1.75 percentage points over Libor.
In 2015, he borrowed another $170 million to fund the conversion of an old post office in Washington, D.C., into a hotel near the White House. Deutsche Bank also issued a loan against the Trump International tower in Chicago.
While Schiff is conducting his Deutsche Bank hearings, I hope someone asks those free-wheeling financiers, why they were so eager to ‘spot’ Trump all the cash he would ever need?
Then again, we already have these “Trump-Insiders” who made have inadvertantly explained Deutsche’s motivations, to keep the Trump Empire rolling in dough …
Inquiring, fair-play Americans would really like to hear the answers -- from Trump’s all-too-eager “Investors”, vis-à-vis Deutsche Bank, and elsewhere.
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