Russia central bank says alerted Deutsche Bank to suspicious trades from 2014
By Oksana Kobzeva
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's central bank told Deutsche Bank about suspicious trades made by the German bank's clients via its Moscow office in 2014 and an investigation began after that, a senior central bank official said on Thursday.
"Certain operations were detected, we told Deutsche Bank, they gave this to their compliance team and everything started from that," Dmitry Skobelkin, a central bank deputy governor, told reporters.
Skobelkin added that such operations were now not taking place at Deutsche Bank.
Deutsche Bank is being investigated over "mirror trades" involving its Moscow office which may have allowed clients to move money from one country to another without alerting authorities in 2014.
Those trades, which were identified last year, could potentially have allowed clients to breach Western sanctions on Russia over the Ukraine conflict.
Deutsche, which did not respond to a request for comment outside of office hours in Moscow, has said the total volume of the transactions under review is "significant".
A source familiar with the matter told Reuters in December that Deutsche had found a total of $10 billion of suspicious trades, including $6 billion in mirror trades.
Russia's central bank earlier handed Deutsche a small fine of $5,000 for procedural shortcomings in the case, according to a source.
The Russia trades have been a legal headache for Deutsche.
It is sharing its findings into the trades with European watchdogs such as the ECB, Germany's Bafin and Britain's FCA, as well as the U.S. Justice Department and New York State's Department of Financial Services.
Deutsche decided to cut back on its investment banking activities in Russia last year amid a programme to shrink its global footprint to a regional one under Chief Executive John Cryan.
(Additional reporting by Alexander Winning; Editing by Alexander Smith and David Evans)
