Deutsche Bank AG is seeking to dismiss the New York lawsuit brought by a former trader who alleges the institution made him a scapegoat for manipulating the Libor market.
The bank's lawyers said in a brief Friday that, contrary to plaintiff Matthew Connolly's claims, there was no evidence the bank "initiated" prosecution of the trader or made false and misleading statements about him.
Connolly had headed the New York trading department at Deutsche Bank.
In 2018, he was sentenced to nine months of house arrest and a $100,000 fine for allegedly fraudulently manipulating Deutsche Bank's Libor reports.
However, an appeals court acquitted them last January, finding insufficient evidence that the two men had tricked the bank into making the false reports.
Libor (the acronym for London Interbank Offered Rate) is based on a daily survey of short-term interest rates estimated by banks.
It serves as a benchmark for evaluating financial products with a volume of trillions of dollars.
In November, Connolly filed a malicious allegation lawsuit against Deutsche Bank, seeking $150 million in damages.
In their motion to dismiss the lawsuit, the bank's attorneys state that the bank's cooperation with prosecutors in their investigation of Connolly was not malicious.
"If anyone is responsible for Mr. Connolly's situation, it is not Deutsche Bank," they said.
To clean up the Libor scandal, Deutsche Bank agreed to a settlement in which it paid a $2.5 billion fine and made personnel changes.