LONDON (Reuters) -Five former Deutsche Bank employees are suing their ex-employer, according to court filings published in London on Wednesday.
The five were among a group of bankers at Deutsche who were convicted in 2019, and then acquitted in 2022, over derivative deals that Italian prosecutors said helped Italian bank Monte dei Paschi hide losses in one of Italy’s biggest financial scandals.
Deutsche Bank said it was “aware that five individuals have threatened to file claims in the UK in the context of this matter. Deutsche Bank considers all such claims to be entirely without merit and will defend itself against them robustly”.
A former trading head, Michele Foresti, filed a case on September 30 against four Deutsche entities for commercial fraud.
Four other ex-Deutsche employees, Ivor Dunbar, Michele Faissola, Marco Veroni and Matteo Vaghi, have also filed lawsuits against Deutsche Bank in London’s High Court. The filings did not specify what the lawsuits were about.
Deutsche Bank as an institution was also convicted and then acquitted for failing to prevent wrongdoing by its employees in relation to the Monte dei Paschi case.
Monte dei Paschi reached a court settlement over the derivatives case in 2016 at a cost of 10.6 million euros. The defendants have always denied any wrongdoing.
The London lawsuits against Deutsche come after Dario Schiraldi, another former Deutsche banker who had his conviction over the derivative trades overturned in 2022, has launched a suit in Frankfurt. He is seeking 152-million-euro ($178 million) in damages from the bank, alleging that the lender’s actions harmed Schiraldi’s reputation and earnings, according to court documents seen by Reuters.
Deutsche Bank disclosed Schiraldi’s lawsuit in its 2024 annual report released earlier this year, in a list of potentially significant civil litigation and regulatory matters.
In a statement in August, Deutsche Chairman Alexander Wynaendts said: “The facts of this long-standing matter are well known and have been discussed in detail over the past decade. The Supervisory Board supports the Management Board in defending the bank against this litigation.”
($1 = 0.8527 euros)
(Reporting by Andres Gonzalez, Sam Tobin and Tom Sims; Writing by Tommy Reggiori Wilkes; Editing by Alison Williams)
