Less than two weeks after it was reported that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office was ramping up its investigation into President Donald Trump’s finances, the president’s key contact at Deutsche Bank has resigned her position with the international money lender, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Rosemary Vrablic, 60, stepped down from her role as a managing director and senior banker in Deutsche’s wealth management division, bank spokesman Daniel Hunter told the Times. Though the specific reason for Vrablic’s departure remains unclear, the bank in August opened an internal investigation into her personal real estate dealings with a company partially owned by the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner had also been one of Vrablic’s longtime clients and was reported to be the conduit that helped establish her relationship with Trump back in 2011. Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son Justin Kennedy was also reportedly instrumental in helping Trump secure loans from the bank in the mid-2000s.
According to the report, the bank’s internal review is centered on a Manhattan apartment purchased by Vrablic and two Deutsche Bank colleagues from a company called Bergel 715 Associates for $1.5 million in 2013. At the time of the purchase, Kushner was one of Vrablic’s clients and simultaneously held an ownership stake in Bergel, circumstances with significant potential for conflicts of interest. One of the other bank employees involved in the transaction, Dominic Scalzi, also tendered his resignation.
Trump’s relationship with the German bank has come under increased scrutiny of late as reports have said that Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance is “significantly escalating” his criminal investigation into the president and his private businesses. As previously reported by Law&Crime, prosecutors in Vance’s office recently interviewed Deutsche Bank employees in connection with the investigation.
Vrablic’s departure also comes a few months after the Times revealed that Trump owes the bank approximately $330 million in personally-backed loans—established through Vrablic— that are set to come due in 2023 and 2024. While the president has a history of defaulting on past loans, in this case the bank would be able to go after his personal assets.
Up until 2015, Vrablic reported to Thomas Bowers, the former bank executive who signed off on several of the controversial loans to Trump. Bowers, who has been described as “the gatekeeper to financial documents for the bank’s wealthiest customers,” died by suicide in Nov. 2019.
Deutsche Bank, which was hit with a $150 million penalty as recently as July for enabling infamous deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, is reportedly looking to sever its ties to Trump as soon as possible.
According to a bombshell report by Reuters, the steady stream of bad press related to the bank’s close and oftentimes inexplicable relationship with the 45th president was the driving factor. Per the report, three anonymous “senior bank officials with direct knowledge of the matter” told Reuters in no uncertain terms that the bank would like to rid itself of the “last vestiges of the relationship” with the soon-to-be former president.
[image via Doug Mills/Pool/Getty Images]
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