'There was always plenty of money around': Trump blasts 'fake' news story claiming Deutsche Bank was the 'only' one that would lend to him and its top brass rejected money-laundering red flags
- News report described back-channel effort at Deutsche Bank to flag Donald Trump's financial transactions as suspicious
- Bank's team feared they were part of a money-laundering effort but concerns were quashed at high levels
- Trump blasted The New York Times for running the story, which described the German bank as one of the 'only' ones that would lend to him for buildings
- He complained that he never had any trouble borrowing money and that he often paid cash for projects
- Trump has previously called himself 'the king of debt'
- He wrote cryptically Monday on Twitter that two tweets in his morning chain were never posted – but later deleted that message
Donald Trump erupted at The New York Times on Monday following a blistering report that described his main bank lender quashing its own investigators' concerns that some loans could be part of a money-laundering scheme
The Times described Deutsche Bank, which quickly denied the allegation, as 'the only mainstream financial institution consistently willing to do business with the real estate developer.'
The sent the president to his Twitter account, howling that he has to fend off 'phony stories about how I didn't use many banks because they didn't want to do business with me.'
'WRONG! It is because I didn't need money,' he wrote.
Trump has called himself 'the king of debt,' describing his decades-long habit of financing most of hie project rather than paying for them up-front. That practice has also allowed him to show yearly losses on his books, minimizing his tax obligations.
But he complained sarcastically on Monday about the Times' conclusion that few banks would lend to him, forcing him to self-finance much of his empire's expansion.
President Donald Trump lashed out at a New York Times report claiming his main lender flagged some of his transactions as potential money-laundering concerns
Trump said 'fake media' is out to get him, and that he never had problem obtaining loans for his building projects around the world
'Now the new big story is that Trump made a lot of money and buys everything for cash, he doesn't need banks. But where did he get all of that cash? Could it be Russia? No, I built a great business and don't need banks, but if I did they would be there,' Trump tweeted.
'[A]nd DeutscheBank was very good and highly professional to deal with - and if for any reason I didn't like them, I would have gone elsewhere....there was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from. They would be very happy to take my money.'
Still, he insisted that '[w]hen you don't need or want money, you don't need or want banks,' calling the notion of paying millions of dollars in cash 'very old fashioned.'
'Banks have always been available to me, they want to make money. Fake Media only says this to disparage, and always uses unnamed sources (because their sources don't even exist),' he jabbed.
The president later said on Twitter that two tweets from his mini-storm had disappeared without being posted – only to delete that complaint minutes later.
'Two Tweets missing from last batch, probably a Twitter error. No time for a redo! Only the Dems get redos!' he had vented.
The Times story, based largely on anonymous sources, focused on anti-money laundering specialists at Deutsche Bank AG who reportedly recommended in 2016 and 2017 that multiple transactions involving entities controlled by Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, be reported to a federal financial-crimes watchdog.
'There was always plenty of money around and banks to choose from,' Trump vented on Monday
The newspaper said executives at the German-based bank, which has lent billions of dollars to the Trump and Kushner companies, rejected their employees' advice and the reports were never filed with the government.
Deutsche Bank denied the report but shares in Germany's largest bank hit a new low on Monday, below a previous minimum set in December. At 1050 GMT, shares traded down 3.2 percent at 6.62 euros.
The compliance allegations are the latest in a wave of problems to beset the bank which faces investors at its annual meeting on Thursday.
The Times said the transactions, some of which involved Trump's now-defunct foundation, set off alerts in a computer system designed to detect illicit activity, according to the former bank employees.
Compliance staff members who then reviewed the transactions prepared so-called suspicious activity reports that they believed should be sent to a unit of the Treasury Department that polices financial crimes, according to the newspaper.
Deutsche Bank responded with a denial of the report.
'At no time was an investigator prevented from escalating activity identified as potentially suspicious,' the bank said in a statement.
'Furthermore, the suggestion that anyone was reassigned or fired in an effort to quash concerns relating to any client is categorically false.'
Deutsche is facing a series of headaches.
The president wrote cryptically Monday on Twitter that two tweets in his morning chain were never posted – but later deleted that message
Investors are calling on the bank to scale back its investment bank after talks to merge with a rival failed and amid a grim profit outlook. European regulators also fear Deutsche could fail U.S. stress tests.
The Times reported the bank employees viewed the decision not to report the transactions as a result of a lax approach to money laundering laws. They said there was a pattern of bank executives rejecting reports to protect relationships with lucrative clients, according to the newspaper.
One employee who reviewed some of the transactions said she was terminated last year after raising concerns about the bank's practices, the Times reported.
A spokeswoman for the Trump Organization told Reuters 'the story is absolute nonsense.' 'We have no knowledge of any 'flagged' transactions with Deutsche Bank. In fact, we have no operating accounts with Deutsche Bank,' she said.
The newspaper said a Kushner Companies spokeswoman called any allegations of relationships involving money laundering 'made up and totally false.'
Officials at Kushner Companies were not immediately available to Reuters for independent comment.
The Times said the nature of the transactions was not clear. At least some of them involved money flowing back and forth with overseas entities or individuals, which bank employees considered suspicious.
The report surfaces at a time when congressional and New York state authorities are investigating the relationship between Trump, his family and Deutsche Bank, and demanding documents related to any suspicious activity.
Trump has sued in court in an attempt to block U.S. House of Representatives subpoenas for his financial records that were sent to Deutsche Bank, Capital One Financial Corp and the accounting firm Mazars LLP.
(Reporting by David Morgan Editing by Daniel Wallis, Clarence Fernandez and Keith Weir)
