Lawsuit details Deutsche Bank’s investigation of ties to top Russian officials
Deutsche Bank called it Project Dastan, a Persian word for the kind of ornate oral histories that are common across Central Asia, including heroic tales of resistance to Russian occupation. But in this case Dastan is a code name for an internal probe into whether executives at the embattled German lender breached antibribery rules by getting too cozy with Russian officials — specifically by hiring their children to win business. The bank’s investigation into its own hiring practices was detailed for the first time in a lawsuit last week by a former executive, Nizar al-Bassam. The revelation of the four-year-old probe, which appears to be ongoing, opens another window into Deutsche Bank’s troubled history in Russia. In 2017, it paid more than $600m in fines to US and UK regulators over its use of so-called mirror trades to move as much as $10bn out of the country. Scrutiny of hiring practices by global banks has intensified since JPMorgan Chase paid $264m in 2016 to settle US allegat...
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