US Department of Justice reprimands Deutsche Bank
Late Notification of Greenwashing Claims

Deutsche Bank last year violated the terms of a stay-of-prosecution agreement with the US Department of Justice.
The bank violated an agreement with the DOJ by failing to timely report a whistleblower complaint about greenwashing allegations to its asset manager, DWS.
As part of a 2021 agreement with the DOJ, made as part of a settlement over alleged bribery, fraudulent and manipulative commodity trading practices, Deutsche pledged to report potential new legal issues as soon as it becomes aware of them.
The DOJ found that the bank had violated the DPA because it failed to timely report "certain allegations related to environmental, social and governance-related information" to DWS, Deutsche said in its annual report.
As a sanction, according to the bank, the DOJ "extended an existing surveillance procedure". Deutsche warned her investors that the DOJ "reserves all rights to take further action regarding the 2021 DPA as it deems necessary."
Deutsche, DWS and the DOJ all declined to comment.
At the center of the matter are the allegations made by whistleblowers in March 2021 that greenwashing was carried out on a large scale at the German asset management company DWS. The allegations were made by former head of sustainability at DWS, Desiree Fixler, shortly after she was fired in early 2021.
In an email she sent on March 17 to Karl von Rohr, vice chairman of the board of Deutsche and chair of DWS, she accused DWS of the way it measured environmental, social and governance metrics used to analyze companies on their investment platform. DWS then commissioned PwC, which advises the company on ESG issues, to conduct an internal investigation into the complaint. PwC later denied all allegations.
Fixler's allegations were made public by the Wall Street Journal last August, prompting the DOJ to launch an investigation into the matter. News of the investigation caused DWS' market capitalization to drop by 1 billion euros in one day.
Following Fixler's departure, DWS abandoned its controversial "smart integration" approach to ESG, which was the focus of its complaint. In its 2021 annual report, also released on Friday, DWS reported just €115 billion in "ESG assets" for 2021 -- 75 percent down from a year earlier, when it reported €459 billion in assets as "ESG-integrated." designated.
The "smart integration" approach will be phased out over the course of 2022 and will be replaced by a new, more sophisticated framework based on new EU regulations, according to DWS' annual report.
"I pointed out in 2020 that smart integration is a highly flawed risk assessment system that could cause financial harm to investors," Fixler told the Financial Times on Friday.
In its 2020 Annual Report, DWS called "smart integration" one of the "first steps" on its journey to carbon neutrality, calling it a "new, more intensive assessment process for sustainability risk management".
Fixler objected to DWS labeling investment strategies as "ESG-integrated" when fund management only had access to ESG data but chose not to use it. DWS rejected the greenwashing allegations and denies any wrongdoing. It has not formed any provisions that are intended for this case.
A person familiar with internal discussions at DWS said the changes were made independently of the whistleblower complaint but were triggered by a new EU regulation that came into effect after the wealth manager announced its "Smart -Integration" approach.





