德国检方年内第三次搜查德意志银行总部

Deutsche Bank headquarters raided for third time this year
German prosecutors have searched Deutsche Bank’s headquarters for the third time this year, as legacy scandals continue to overshadow chief executive Christian Sewing’s turnaround of the country’s largest lender.
“According to our information, this relates to transactions by Postbank between 2008 and 2010,” Deutsche Bank said. “Deutsche Bank is being searched as a third party in this matter and we are co-operating fully.”
Deutsche Bank acquired Postbank from Germany’s postal service Deutsche Post in 2010.
The Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office said it was conducting an investigation and had carried out searches in Frankfurt and elsewhere on Wednesday. It declined to provide further details, citing tax secrecy rules.
The latest search threatens to detract from Sewing’s efforts to rehabilitate Deutsche Bank, which he has led since 2018 amid legacy scandals and legal disputes, which continue to weigh on the lender. The lender reported record profits last year, while its shares have roughly tripled over the past three years.
The current investigation concerns alleged share-swapping deals — known as “cum-cum transactions” and designed to avoid paying dividend tax — carried out by Postbank, according to two people familiar with the matter. Deutsche Bank did not begin integrating the retail lender until 2017, embarking on a protracted and troubled process that was not completed until 2024.
Cum-cum transactions typically involved foreign investors temporarily transferring shares in German companies to domestic banks around dividend dates, allowing withholding tax to be reclaimed or avoided. German authorities have challenged arrangements they consider abusive.
Unlike cum-ex trades, which generated multiple tax refunds even though the tax had been paid only once, cum-cum structures generally sought to avoid or reduce a single withholding-tax charge.
Deutsche Bank said it paid €29mn in 2025 to settle tax claims linked to cum-ex transactions, but its annual report contains no comparable disclosure of payments or provisions relating to cum-cum deals.
Süddeutsche Zeitung and Die Welt first reported the latest raid.
A recent survey by financial watchdog BaFin found that 54 banks had potentially participated in cum-cum transactions. The watchdog estimated that the resulting financial burden on the lenders could reach more than €4bn.
The raid comes a week after Frankfurt prosecutors searched a Deutsche Bank branch on the ground floor of its twin-tower headquarters. That investigation concerns a former employee accused of embezzling a six-figure sum from customers, according to a person familiar with the matter.
In January, prosecutors searched the headquarters a day before the bank published its annual results as part of a separate money-laundering investigation. The inquiry concerns Deutsche Bank’s examination of transactions involving companies linked to a Russian oligarch between 2013 and 2018, and whether the lender was too slow to file a suspicious activity report.