Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest bank, bent over backward for about two decades to approve multi-million dollar loans to Donald Trump despite this businessman's long history of bankruptcies and business failures.
Separate investigations by the New York attorney general's office and the Democratic-controlled Intelligence Committee and Financial Services Committee in Congress are looking deeper into Trump's financial ties with Deutsche Bank. The probes want to know why the German bank persisted in loaning millions to the high-risk Trump and what the bank gained by continuing this risky business relationship.
Financial experts argue that without Deutsche Bank's loans, Trump's real estate business, the core of his more than 400 business ventures, would have crumbled long ago.
Deutsche Bank was the only large western bank to continue to lend to Trump following bankruptcies of his casinos and other businesses in the 1990s. Over the past few years, the bank has loaned Trump about $300 million.
Deutsche Bank granted Trump loans amounting to more than $2 billion for nearly two decades, reported The New York Times. Interviews with more than 20 former and current executives and board members at Deutsche Bank revealed what can be construed as inexplicable gullibility by the bank's senior officers.
This leniency might be due to deliberate misrepresentations by Trump, who has been known time and again to exaggerate the true extent of his wealth when applying for loans. In testimony before Congress this month, Trump's former fixer and friend, Michael Cohen, said Trump's modus operandi was to boost the extent of his wealth to secure loans, and to deflate his wealth for income tax purposes.
The report also revealed Trump rewarded officers of Deutsche Bank with all-expenses-paid weekends at Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties as bribes to secure loans he needed.
The report said Trump used loans provided by Deutsche Bank to build skyscrapers and other high-end properties. For the German bank, its relationship with Trump was key in building its investment-banking business, said the report.
Deutsche Bank is now in a perilous financial situation due to three years of losses, rating downgrades, failed stress tests, money laundering scandals and its bad loans to U Trump. The U.S. Congress will soon investigate the bank's relationship with Trump, who is under investigation for a host of business, legal and ethical lapses.
In January, two U.S. congressional committees began probing Deutsche Bank's business dealings with Trump. The probe is a joint effort between House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) and House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA). Both are prominent Trump critics who now have the power to investigate Trump's fiscal and financial malfeasance.
