
Trump, Putin & Co.: Deutsche Bank's Questionable Clientele
Deutsche Bank spent the 2000s chasing growth in Moscow, and this DW investigation follows what that ambition cost. Bank employees are shown bribing officials connected to Vladimir Putin, arranging brothel visits for favored clients, and laundering money tied to organized crime, deals that eventually triggered billions of dollars in fines and regulatory penalties still weighing on the bank today. The film pairs that Russian chapter with the bank's decades-long relationship with Donald Trump, who became one of its most important clients starting in 1998 despite a public history of business bankruptcies and defaulted loans. Interviews with former employees, financial journalists, and regulators trace how executives kept extending credit and cultivating ties even as warning signs piled up, while bank leadership maintained it had done nothing wrong. Archival footage, internal documents, and courtroom material anchor the reporting as it moves between Moscow deal rooms and Trump's real estate empire, building a picture of an institution whose pursuit of profit repeatedly overrode its own risk controls.