London: Indian-origin banker Anshu Jain, Deutsche Bank's former co-chief, has got a clean chit from the German financial watchdog BaFin, on charges of allegedly lying to the regulators about the interbank rate rigging scandal.
Jain, who quit as co-CEO of Deutsche Bank with effect from June 30, was earlier accused of having "knowingly made inaccurate statements" to Germany's central bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, thus misleading regulators on what he knew about the alleged manipulation of inter-bank rates such as Libor.
As per reports, the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) had criticised Deutsche Bank and Jain in its report on investigations into the rate fixing scandal. Bafin and Deutsche Bundesbank together share the supervision of banking business in the country.
A report in business daily Financial Times, however, said on July 25 that BaFin has dropped "a key strand of its investigation" and has cleared Jain of allegedly lying to the central bank about what he knew about the rate manipulation. On its part, Deutsche Bank said, "We continue to work with our regulator to bring this inquiry to a conclusion."
In a letter written to Jain earlier this month, BaFin President Felix Hufeld said that the regulator was "dropping that part of its probe into Libor-rigging at Deutsche after considering that the 'probable' interpretation of the evidence weighed in Jain's favour," the report said.
"The suspicion that you made knowingly incorrect statements to a regulator seems unsubstantiated to me... This aspect will therefore no longer be relevant in the continued assessment by BaFin," Hufeld wrote in his letter to Jain.
The BaFin President, however, added that all other allegations against Jain and Deutsche Bank were still being evaluated by the regulator. Jain, 52, had reportedly told the central bank that he had no knowledge of rumours of possible rigging in 2008. Deutsche Bank had said last month that Jain's comments were taken out of context.
"Jain disputes as baseless the allegation that he misled the Bundesbank in his 2012 interview. "He understood Bundesbank's question about when he first learned of rumours of possible LIBOR rigging to mean rigging at Deutsche Bank itself which he learned of in 2011, not rigging in the marketplace which was publicly reported on in 2008," the bank had said in a statement on June 27.
The bank paid USD 2.5 billion earlier this year to settle probes in the US and the UK into alleged manipulation of Libor and Euribor benchmark rates by its traders. Jain had joined Deutsche Bank more than 20 years ago and he served as a co-CEO for three years.
