Deutsche Bank’s spokesman Daniel Hunter announced that Rosemary Vrablic, President Donald Trump’s personal contact at the bank, who handled his over $300 million loans, has resigned from the bank. According to Hunter, Vrablic’s resignation has been approved and will be effective from December 31. Vrablic will be resigning from her position as managing director and one of the top personnel of the bank’s wealth management division, NY Times reports.
“I am resigning from my position at Deutsche Bank, effective from the last day of the year,” Vrablic stated on Tuesday.
Vrablic and Deutsche Bank did not give any reason for Vrablic’s sudden departure from the bank. Vrablic and Dominic Scalzi, who has worked closely with Vrablic for over a decade, will also be resigning from the bank, as confirmed by Scalzi’s lawyer. The transaction constitutes a part of the focus of a Deutsche Bank internal review which started in August. The review is looking into a transaction between Vrablic, Scalzi, and Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband.
Vrablic and Scalzi bought an apartment in Park Avenue from a company that was partly owned by Kushner. At the time of the $1.5 million transactions, Kushner was Vrablic’s client. It is against the policy of banks for their employees to do personal businesses with clients to avoid a conflict of interests. Vrablic and Scalzi, who both joined the German bank in 2006, broke this policy with the 2013 transaction. The bank has not released the outcome of the review but stated that it expects that the review will be completed at the end of the year.
According to reports, Kushner introduced Vrablic to his father-in-law, whom many banks were wary of as a result of his company’s perchance to default loans, in 2011. Vrablic, with approval from her bosses, handled loans of $330 million for Trump for some of his businesses including his Chicago skyscraper. The loans, which will be due in 2023 and 2024, are currently under investigation, CNN writes.
Cyrus R. Vance, the district attorney of Manhattan, is currently investigating Trump’s claims about the worth of his assets when he acquired the loans. According to Vance, the president might have inflated the value of the assets to get the loans. Such wrongful claims constitute financial crimes. Prosecutors, regulators, and Democrat lawmakers are also investigating Trump’s relationship with Deutsche Bank.
With the loans to be repaid in two to three years, Vrablic’s exit from the bank might not be very convenient for the president who might end up losing some of his personal assets if he fails to repay the loans at the agreed time. According to reports, some top executives of the bank had been against the loan as a result of Trump’s bad record of loan repayment default. In 2008, Trump had failed to repay a huge loan he got from Deutsche Bank.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s previous personal lawyer testified before Congress last year that Trump had inflated the worth of some of his assets to get loans from the German bank. Some active and retired executives of the bank also attested to Cohen’s testimony about the inflated figures.
Source: nytimes.com
