Wall St. Journal – Deutsche Bank Gained Lucrative Business From Trump, Former Executive Testifies
The former Deutsche Bank executive who recruited Donald Trump as a client testified Wednesday that the bank’s dealings with the former president were lucrative and her superiors were eager to expand them.
Rosemary Vrablic, a former relationship manager with the bank’s private-wealth-management division, is one of several witnesses from Deutsche Bank being called to the stand this week by Trump’s lawyers as they seek to rebut allegations by the New York attorney general that Trump committed civil fraud by overstating his wealth for financial gain.
The trial in Manhattan, which began in October and is being decided without a jury, is expected to conclude next month. The case has potentially serious consequences for Trump’s fortune and family business, at the same time he is the front-runner to be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
Vrablic, who left the bank in 2021, first connected with Trump in 2011 on the recommendation of the former president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. At the time, Trump was rolling in cash and fame from his role on the reality television show “The Apprentice” and expanding his empire of golf courses. Deutsche Bank, which had an earlier rocky history of lending money to Trump, was at that point eager to do business with Trump and his family, Vrablic said.
“We are whale hunting,” Vrablic wrote in a 2011 email that was read in court, a reference to landing the billionaire as a client. By that December, Trump had parked $20 million into a Deutsche Bank account. The next year, Deutsche had lent Trump more than $200 million, financing his acquisition of Miami’s Doral golf resort. By 2013, the bank was generating millions in revenue from its business with Trump, she said.
Vrablic said Trump fit the profile of a real-estate “entrepreneur and investor with a successful track record” that the bank was trying to target.
On cross-examination, she said she never examined Trump’s financial statements herself but had an expectation that her clients wouldn’t submit false or misleading statements to the bank, as the state alleges Trump did.
Her testimony came a day after David Williams, a Deutsche Bank loan underwriter who worked on annual credit reviews of Trump, testified that it wasn’t unusual for the bank and a client to arrive at sharply different net-worth estimates. In 2013, Trump estimated his net worth at $4.9 billion while the bank put the figure at $2.6 billion after doing its own analysis, according to documents cited in court.
Williams said he saw nothing out of the ordinary with the bank’s downward adjustment.
Trump lawyer Chris Kise said the testimony from bank officials showed that New York Attorney General Letitia James had no case.
The bank was “fully satisfied with the deal it struck,” Kise said. “The attorney general isn’t free to say, ‘Well, I don’t care what that evidence says. I don’t care what the bank thinks.’ ”
Kevin Wallace of the attorney general’s office said none of the witness testimony was exonerating. “I think the idea that you can’t lie to a bank is pretty well established,” he said.
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AP news – 40 wittiness 43 days…
https://apnews.com/article/trump-fraud-trial-new-york-44d7ce912fa2434c452e2b5dd6139789
After 40 witnesses and 43 days of testimony, here’s what we learned at Trump’s civil fraud trial
…TRUMP AND THE BANK
Much of the trial was devoted to the hundreds of millions of dollars Deutsche Bank loaned Trump’s company, starting in 2011.
The state says Trump rooked his way into the financing, at attractive interest rates, by padding his wealth. The defendants say they didn’t and maintain the bank was delighted with the loans. All were paid off, the last of them during the trial.
Several Deutsche bankers testified that they expected unaudited financial statements like Trump’s to be generally accurate but understood them as estimates and internally made “haircuts” that at times lopped billions off Trump’s net worth, which still left it at over $2 billion.
Dueling experts debated whether those adjustments showed that the bank didn’t rely on Trump’s numbers and that he was rich enough to qualify for the loans anyway (as the defense contends) or whether the “haircuts” were essentially standard deductions that didn’t compensate for his alleged inflation (the state’s view).
As for the bankers’ own views of their dealings with Trump, testimony was often oblique.
For example, when retired Deutsche Bank risk management officer Nicholas Haigh was asked whether the loans were a good credit decision, he demurred that it was “a subjective question” but said the bankers did a good job analyzing the information they had. But he also said the bank needs a true picture of risk to set interest rates.
Managing Director David Williams and former colleague Rosemary Vrablic said they hadn’t been troubled by big gaps between Trump’s and the bank’s estimates of his assets.
A ‘WHALE’ OF A CLIENT
What was clear was that Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management division, which caters to rich people, was eager to lend to Trump.
Testimony and internal documents showed the bankers courted him as a big-dollar “whale” of a client who could connect them to “the wealthiest people on the planet.” Alongside the loan deals came multimillion-dollar bank deposits from Trump, and the bankers envisioned “cross-selling” him lucrative, fee-based services such as estate planning….
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the HILL – Trump defense points to bankers as proof business dealings had ‘no victim’
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4336186-trump-defense-bankers-business-dealings-victim
Former President Trump and Deutsche Bank’s years-long symbiotic relationship came to the forefront of his New York civil fraud trial this week when top executives who once loaned the former president’s business hundreds of millions of dollars gave the most compelling defense yet in his trial.
The executives bolstered arguments Trump’s counsel has made from the start: that the bank wanted to work with the Trump Organization, did its own due diligence and found no fraud.
In fact, the bankers’ testimony was such a boon to Trump’s defense that his lawyers asked the judge to issue an immediate decision in their favor.
But the trial judge — who has often butted heads with Trump and his legal team, and who already found Trump’s business liable for fraud — did not appear convinced.
“I would point out that the mere fact that the lenders were happy doesn’t mean that the statute wasn’t violated, doesn’t mean that the other statutes weren’t violated,” Judge Arthur Engoron said, taking the request under advisement.
Engoron has already found Trump, his business and several executives liable for fraud, determining that New York Attorney General Letitia James proved the crux of her case. The trial is addressing other claims, including conspiracy, insurance fraud and falsifying business records.
The judge, who is overseeing the trial with no jury, will alone decide the verdict.
OK sooo
•The Bank didn’t really care what he submitted because they made their own appraisal.
•The Bank wanted him as a client.
•The Bank testified in his defense.
•The Bank was paid in full on the loans as agreed.
•The Bank is not a victim but the NY govt wants to prosecute anyway?