Although his attempt to pressure Ukraine into investigating his domestic political opponents has occupied much of the spotlight lately thanks to his impeachment over the scandal, President Donald Trump’s concern-sparking corruption extends well on from there, as the multiple ongoing federal investigations into situations involving him make clear. Now, whistleblower Val Broeksmit, who’s the son of a late executive at Deutsche Bank, has publicly insisted that none other than the Russian government-run VTB Bank itself underwrote loans to Trump that were delivered by Deutsche Bank. If true, that would be a major financial tie between the president of the United States and Russian authorities that Putin could use as leverage against Trump.
Broeksmit claims:
‘The Russian state bank VTB underwrote loans to Donald Trump via Deutsche Bank. Over the course of Trump’s relationship with DB, an inordinate amount of questionable, mismanaged &risky loans approved by Deutsche Bank to Trump required his Personal Guarantee which, overtime, also lost its value. Trump’s team at DB sought out creative ways to circumvent the varied protections DB’s compliance team institutionally implemented, & whether by happenstance or by design Trump’s loans became underwritten by Russia’s own VTB. I informed the FBI of this in 2019.’
Deutsche Bank has already grown infamous for its role as one of just about the only financial institutions in the world that was willing to loan to Trump even after he repeatedly majorly fumbled his finances. For at least a couple of years around the early 1990s, he reported more losses than any other American taxpayer — but the loans kept coming anyway.
In the time since, the bank has been hit with numerous scandals involving corruption like a criminal scheme to conceal losses at Italy’s Monte dei Paschi bank and multiple revelations of the bank’s role in Russian money laundering schemes, including one that directly involved a subsidiary that delivered some loans for Trump. In the early 2010’s, the bank’s global network was “effectively allowing illegal Russian payments to be funneled to the US, the European Union and Asia,” in the description of the Guardian.
As recently as 2013, the specifically Trump-associated subsidiary — Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas (DBTCA) — was apparently in debt to the soon after sanctioned VTB Bank, who it owed a whopping around $48.6 million. Trump apparently still owes that Deutsche Bank subsidiary a whopping $350 million, which is almost one percent of their current assets as a whole.
Deutsche Bank has bluntly denied the claims that their loans to Trump have been underwritten by VTB Bank, although as mentioned, they’ve been caught in corruption before. At least some related questions would perhaps be able to be put to rest if the president was even remotely forthcoming about any of his financial entanglements, but instead, he’s desperately clamped down on any and all information about his personal financial ties like he knows he’s got something to hide. It’s already come out that the Russian government-run VTB Bank was even set to finance the never actually constructed Trump Tower Moscow. Soon, the U.S. Supreme Court will ever hear a handful of cases in which the president’s team is claiming they shouldn’t have to abide by Congressional subpoenas for Trump’s financial records.
