German investigators search Deutsche Bank offices in money laundering probe

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - German investigators searched the offices of Deutsche Bank, Germany's largest, on Wednesday in connection with an investigation into possible money laundering, officials said.

Prosecutors in Frankfurt said that the probe focused on "unknown employees" and the bank's prior business relationships to foreign entities which were in turn suspected of being used to launder money. Offices were searched in Frankfurt, where the bank is headquartered, and in Berlin. The Frankfurt prosecutor's office said it could not provide more information on the nature and size of the transactions under scrutiny.

Deutsche Bank said in a statement that "we confirm that the Frankfurt public prosecutor's office is on site in our offices. The bank is cooperating fully with the public prosecutor's office. We cannot comment further."

The search comes a day before the bank is to release its earnings report for 2025.

Deutsche Bank has had several run-ins with overseers over the years. It was fined $205 million by New York regulators in 2018 for manipulating the foreign exchange market, and $41 million by the Federal Reserve in 2017 for failure to maintain controls against money laundering, as well as $629 million in penalties in 2017 by New York and British regulators for lapses in controls that allowed wealthy Russians to launder $10 billion in illicit funds through the bank.

In general, money laundering can be defined as transactions intended to obscure the origin of funds to make them appear to have come from a legitimate source.