Police cars staked out the building, a helicopter swooped noisily overhead, and hundreds of police and prosecutors stormed into Germany’s venerable Deutsche Bank AG. The unprecedented assault on its corporate offices in Frankfurt, described in news accounts last December, was the ultimate in humiliation for the bank, which for the past several years has lurched from one scandal to the next. Quite simply, the raid meant that one of the largest financial institutions in the world was being treated like a common criminal.
Recent allegations against Deutsche are myriad; the raid stemmed from an alleged tax fraud aggravated by accusations of obstruction of justice. Other allegations include manipulating the interbank loan rates known as LIBOR, misleading investors in subprime mortgage deals, hiding losses from the public and regulators, and more.
