Deutsche Bank had a very big problem. For years they’d been engaged in money-laundering activity in Russia. And a decade earlier had connected Trump with wealthy Russians to build his resorts in Hawaii and Mexico.
“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”
“5” Steve Zahn, 51: “Some people prefer sweet lies over harsh truths. Even so, you may be able to tell the truth in a softer way, or compassionately reframe the story to highlight a different part of it.” Scorpio
Hi and welcome to Friday’s 10th Episode in Season 4 of “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 18th day of March in the spring of 2022.
We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year.
Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.
Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year
S4 E9 —Did the Luck of the Irish Run Out This Time for Old Orange Hair? ; S4 E8 —A Suicide and an Epic Trail of Destruction; S4 E7 — And What’s Up with the Justice Department?
Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year
S3 E10 —Feeding the Beast for Sheila in Fantasyland; S3 E9 —Melancholy and Undercover Brooklyn Moms Know Best; S3 E8 — Wait, You’re Saying I Should Read It Again?; S3 E7 — Who Can Resist Ricky Gervais Calls in this Paradoxically Normal Year?
Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year
S2 E10 — Cats, Ladders and Shaking Salt …; S2 E9 — Blame It On Your D4DR Gene, Not Me!; S2 E8 — How Does the Entangled Fish Hook Theory of Creativity Work?; S2 E7 — Smart Moves and Shifting Opportunities
Related from Season One, the Normal Year
S1 E10 — Day 10 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E9 — Day 9 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E8 — Day 8 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E7 — Day 7 of My 1-Year Experiment
Context
Follow the money is what David Enrich tracks in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction”
During the summer of 2016, some suspicious Jared Kushner transactions landed in her inspection queue.
A veteran anti-money-laundering compliance officer at the private bank had been inspecting dozens of accounts for and was lending money to Jeffrey Epstein.
“Vrablic’s super-rich clients, didn’t have the proper documentation.”
Epstein had been cut off from his previous bank, JPMorgan, after being convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, so he switched to Deutsche, as a lucrative client.
He would remain a client until June 2019.
The anti-money-laundering compliance officer inherited a caseload of more than a hundred clients classified as “politically exposed” including Donald Trump and his family members.
They required extra vetting because of the heightened risk in bribery or other public corruption.
What was at stake when during the summer of 2016, Trump clinched the Republican nomination with Kushner serving as his adviser?
It turns out Kushner’s real estate company was moving money to a number of Russian individuals.
Oops.
The private bank trying to preserve its lucrative relationship with the Kushners (therefore the Trumps), the compliance officer was transferred to another division and then, in April 2018, was fired, according to Enrich.
But, the Kushners did have ties to the Bank Leumi, which had its own problematic history of doing business with Russians—while Russia was interfering in the American presidential election.
A tilt in favor of Jared Kushner’s father-in-law.
By November 8, 2016, when Donald Trump won the presidency.
Deutsche had a very big problem. They had for years been engaged in money-laundering activity in Russia. And a decade earlier had connected Trump with wealthy Russians to build his resorts in Hawaii and Mexico.
As Eric Trump said at the time they had all the funding they needed out of Russia.
The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree Trump. Deutsch extended outstanding loans to the Trumps and Kushners. It was like Rosemary Vrablic’s bosses had been star-struck, but now tried to hide the entire institution’s culpability to Russian intelligence,
Deutsche executives were scared about what might happen if it became public, according to Enrich so the bankers raced to get the loan off Deutsche’s books, by selling a large chunk of it to another Russian bank at a discounted price.
Trump had given his personal guarantees on hundreds of millions of dollars. Deutsche would be left with the ugly choice seizing the president’s personal assets or not enforcing the loan terms — dispensing a very lucrative gift to the American president.
So much for them, what about me?
Evidence
“5” Steve Zahn, 51: “Some people prefer sweet lies over harsh truths. Even so, you may be able to tell the truth in a softer way, or compassionately reframe the story to highlight a different part of it.” Scorpio
How’s it going so far retelling the story behind what has been unfolding over the last few weeks, a year ago during the first week of January, the four years leading up to the insurrection and all that transpired behind closed doors in the years leading up to the 2016 presidential election?
Random ones that make me want change my sign.
Today’s Holiday Birthday:
You have vision, and the talent to flesh it out. Consciously build your support system and you’ll move faster and be more fulfilled. A fun relationship is featured. You connect like a great comedy duo, clashing and meshing with exciting, amusing tension. Upgrades in the name of efficiency will pay you back for years.
“5” Steve Winwood, 71; Stevie Wonder, 69; Stephen Colbert, 56: “When things happen in your life, who’s the first one you want to tell? This person is your No. 1 for a reason and will benefit from hearing you articulate the reason today.” Taurus
If you’ve been following along for the last three years, you already know who’d I nominate for numero uno, Emma the Baroness.
“5” Steve Howey, 42: “Are you showing your love? Since other people cannot technically feel your feelings, you make sure to express them well and give plenty of evidence of the emotions you want to share.” Cancer
So this is how loved ones feel they’re taken for granted? Wow, I’d better check in with the Baroness.
“3” Steve Kerr, 54: “A dream is your subconscious trying to get your attention. The emotion of a dream is one of your best interpretive clues. To understand what it means, dive into the feeling of it.” Libra
I may have to ask my muse, Leonardo da V about this one. I don’t remember what I was dreaming last night. Maybe, that’s the real message here. Your Experiencing Self doesn’t remember from moment to moment and beyond. It’s Your Remembering Self that narrates, edits and recalls the highlights in your working memory.
“4” Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “Is it possible that a song understands you in a way that other people in your life don’t seem to? You’ll be motivated, inspired and even healed by the magic of music.” Sagittarius
I pop my earbuds in. Grab my trekking poles. Find the rhythm and dance-walk nearly everyday in the mornings smelling the freshly cut grass in the Little League fields. That’s when my subconscious, Experiencing Self, notes something about songs and lyrics and titles and forgets all about the incidents until now when my Narrative Self reminds me.
What’s Going On …
Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll
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- @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines according to my analytics, grew from 12148 this week to 12252 organically grown followers.
- Orange County Beach Towns 236 viewers stopped by the week before.
Foresight
Quality-of-Life
Long-Form
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- “The Last Leonardo: The Secret Lives of the World’s Most Expensive Painting” by Ben Lewis. Review: “In 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s small oil painting the Salvator Mundi was sold at auction. In the words of its discoverer, the image of Christ as savior of the world is “the rarest thing on the planet.” Its $450 million sale price also makes it the world’s most expensive painting. For two centuries, art dealers had searched in vain for the Holy Grail of art history: a portrait of Christ as the Salvator Mundi by Leonardo da Vinci. Many similar paintings of greatly varying quality had been executed by Leonardo’s assistants in the early sixteenth century. But where was the original by the master himself? In November 2017, Christie’s auction house announced they had it. But did they?”
- “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.”
- David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate
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