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Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

nytimes.com

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Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#21

Post by TACIXAT »

smn1234 wrote: post #8

how convenient, with this in context https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/business/trump-deutsche-b...

Large loans and real estate deals are not the type of money laundering this software detects. It is looking for unusual transaction flows between accounts. For example, if an account receives large amounts money for inconsistent purposes (e.g. computer services and farm equipment), or has large amounts of money flow through it while maintaining a relatively low average balance (e.g. 10 million received and sent when the account normally has 40k in it).

While money is absolutely laundered via real estate and art, that's not what this software detects. The podcast The Dark Money Files is really good if you want to learn more about this. [1]

1. https://www.buzzsprout.com/242645

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#22

Post by fwip »

bla3 wrote: post #17

Subjectively it feels like NYT publishes a lot more negative articles about Deutsche Bank than about any other bank, or at least those articles get upvoted much more frequently here. Does anyone know what's up with that? I would've assumed that most banks are equally terrible.

Deutsche Bank is currently implicated in (or at the very least, relevant to) ongoing news regarding the US President's finances.

That makes it more newsworthy.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#24

Post by mola »

spikels wrote: post #16

This is news?! All software has bugs. NYTimes is taking advantage of the general public’s ignorance of this fact to imply something sinister. Without additional information - such as it specifically targeted certain transactions - that is misleading. Remember this when you read articles about subjects you are not knowledgeable about. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

On the other hand, these businesses cause the public ignorance For example companies that offer all sort of AI solution as some magic bullet. While covering up the inherent "bugs" in such systems.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#25

Post by [deleted] »

fwip wrote: post #22
bla3 wrote: post #17

Subjectively it feels like NYT publishes a lot more negative articles about Deutsche Bank than about any other bank, or at least those articles get upvoted much more frequently here. Does anyone know what's up with that? I would've assumed that most banks are equally terrible.

Deutsche Bank is currently implicated in (or at the very least, relevant to) ongoing news regarding the US President's finances. That makes it more newsworthy.

[deleted]

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#27

Post by andrewstuart2 »

As someone who works at a financial institution, it's news generally because money laundering activity tends to be highly profitable for banks, since they get to collect fees on those transactions. There are almost no incentives for us to flag transactions on our own (unless we're being super humanitarian) without legislation/regulation, because as long as they get their money there's no downside except for victims of the crimes that the money originally originated from.

At least in my opinion, the legislation and big-deal-making is merited in cases like this, for the benefit of society.

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#28

Post by eigenvector »

If you read the original article cited by the NYT (it's in German), it is using 'bug' not in the sense that all software has bugs, but in the sense of 'basic functionality was not working'. And that should be alarming, for critical software.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=de&tl=en&u=htt...

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#29

Post by neves »

bla3 wrote: post #17

Subjectively it feels like NYT publishes a lot more negative articles about Deutsche Bank than about any other bank, or at least those articles get upvoted much more frequently here. Does anyone know what's up with that? I would've assumed that most banks are equally terrible.

American newspapers are blatantly nationalist. It is very hard to point to problems in their companies. Obesity problems? Nestle is is the villain: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/16/health/brazil...

Environment accident with an American oil company? They are victims from a foreign gov: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/19/business/energy-environme...

Antivirus malicious companies? It's always Kaspersky problem: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/01/technology/kaspersky-lab-...

Re: Deutsche Bank Says Software to Detect Money Laundering Had a Bug

#30

Post by throwawaymath »

bla3 wrote: post #17

Subjectively it feels like NYT publishes a lot more negative articles about Deutsche Bank than about any other bank, or at least those articles get upvoted much more frequently here. Does anyone know what's up with that? I would've assumed that most banks are equally terrible.

I don't know if the NYT actually does publish more negative articles about Deutsche Bank than other banks. But if what you're perceiving matches reality, I would assume it is for the following two reasons:

1. Deutsche Bank facilitated a basket option trading strategy used by Renaissance Technologies, which has since earned the latter an investigation from the IRS for aggressive tax avoidance. RenTech is (unfortunately) synonymous with Robert Mercer's political activity in the eyes of many because he was a major partner and CEO of the hedge fund before he stepped down last year. This leads to my second point.

2. Deutsche Bank is (separately from RenTech) involved with Donald Trump in a number of real estate dealings, which other commenters have already cited. Regardless of your personal stance on the president, the NYT is going to spend time investigating any areas of financial misconduct it can find which may be directly or indirectly related to the president.

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