Deutsche Bank’s suspicious transaction reporting hit by software glitch
Still assessing the impact of the glitch
Deutsche Bank has discovered that a software glitch has prevented potentially suspicious transactions being reported to law enforcement authorities since 2010, Jane Connolly writes.
The Financial Times reports that the fault with one of the bank’s several anti-financial crime systems – designed to retrospectively look for suspicious payment patterns by clients – was found after work to improve its internal processes began last autumn.
A Deutsche Bank spokesman was reported as saying that two of the IT application’s 121 parameters were “defined incorrectly”. The bank says it is working to correct the error as quickly as possible and is in close contact with the regulators.
According to the Financial Times, a source said the bank was still assessing the impact of the glitch and did not know how many, if any, suspicious transactions had not been flagged.
It is possible that missed transactions may have been caught by another of Deutsche’s overlapping systems.
The news came on the eve of a shareholder meeting, at which investors were expected to request the removal of chairman Paul Achleitner after the bank’s share price fell to an all-time low this week.
Deutsche Bank has been made to pay heavy fines for breaching money laundering and sanction rules. It remains under investigation by authorities around the world for further alleged breaches.
Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that the bank didn’t flag to regulators potentially suspicious transactions on the accounts of President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner in 2016 and 2017.
