Public prosecutors and tax investigators have searched the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt.

According to information from the Bloomberg news agency, which was confirmed to the FAZ in financial circles, the apartment of former co-CEO Jürgen Fitschen was also a target of the investigators.

"We confirm that the Cologne public prosecutor's office is currently carrying out official measures at our Frankfurt location as part of the investigations against the bank that have been ongoing since 2017 in the matter of cum-ex.

As has been the case since the investigations began in 2017, the bank continues to cooperate fully with the investigating authority," the spokesman for Deutsche Bank told the FAZ. He also declined to comment further.

Hanno Mussler

Editor in Business.

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There was information from the lead public prosecutor's office in Cologne.

An auditing company and the private homes of ten suspects were also visited by tax investigators from North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse and Bavaria, as well as by representatives of the Federal Central Tax Office and IT experts, confirmed the Cologne public prosecutor's office.

A total of 114 investigators were active, which indicates a large-scale operation.

Cum-Ex investigators have already raided the offices of banks like Deka, ABN Amro and Bank of America this year.

Cum-ex deals are a fraud scheme in which the investors, banks and stock traders involved have the state reimburse them multiple times for capital gains taxes that have been paid once.

A large number of banks and fund companies have been under investigation for years, after all the tax damage is estimated at more than 10 billion euros.

Deutsche Bank always assures that it did not run its own cum-ex transactions, but that it did help customers with their cum-ex transactions, for example with financing and securities lending.

Around 80 employees of Deutsche Bank are being investigated, including former CEO Josef Ackermann and other board members, including Fitschen and Anshu Jain, who died in August, who led Deutsche Bank as a double head from June 2012 to May 2016.