Hypocrites? Deutsche Bank Not Bitcoin Pays €15M for Money Laundering

One of the most cited reasons by regulators as well as traditional financial institutions on why people should stay away from Bitcoin is that the cryptocurrency network facilitates money laundering on a large scale.

Often, however, records show that fiat currency and traditional financial institutions coordinate the most significant cases of money laundering in our time, not Bitcoin.

The story was not different when Germany-based Deutsche Bank announced at the weekend that it has agreed to pay €15 million ($16.6 million) to settle money laundering charges leveled against the institution.

As per a Financial Times report on the settlement, enforcement authorities in Germany probed Deutsche Bank of its failure to flag suspicious transactions by two managing directors in the bank’s compliance and wealth management units. 

The unquoted amount of funds in question were reportedly linked to and were moved to offshore accounts via Deutsche Bank between 2013 and 2018.

Although Deutsche claimed on Friday that the probe was dropped “due to lack of sufficient suspicion,” prosecutors enforced a €5m penalty for shortcomings in its control environment and also confiscated €10m of financial gains allegedly generated by the illegal transactions.

Evidently, the fact that employees of Deutsche were able to facilitate large scale money laundering while still offering its services to clients highlights an essential point that Bitcoin opposers often ignore.

While bad actors may use bitcoin in the same as they use fiat to launder money, bitcoin facilitates thousands of genuine transactions daily and should not be written of frailties, also evident in the current monetary system.

Meanwhile, in another recent update from Deutsche Bank, Coinfomania reported the bank as writing in a new research paper that fiat should be dead by 2030.

Putting that into perspective, one may not be wrong to suggest that the earlier financial institutions welcome Bitcoin, the easier it would be for them to stay relevant for the emerging economic system.