Book Review: DARK TOWERS by David Enrich

 

DARK TOWERS; DEUTSCHE BANK, DONALD TRUMP, AND AN EPIC TRAIL OF DESTRUCTION by David Enrich (Custom House, February 2020) Hardcover, 448 pages. ISBN # 0062878816 /9789962878816 

Summary on the Goodreads website . . . . .

A searing exposé of the most scandalous bank in the world, including its shadowy ties to Donald Trump’s business empire.

On a rainy Sunday in 2014, a senior executive at Deutsche Bank was found hanging in his London apartment. Bill Broeksmit had helped build the 150-year-old financial institution into a global colossus, and his sudden death was a mystery, made more so by the bank’s efforts to deter investigation. Broeksmit, it turned out, was a man who knew too much.

In Dark Towers, award-winning journalist David Enrich reveals the truth about Deutsche Bank and its epic path of devastation. Tracing the bank’s history back to its propping up of a default-prone American developer in the 1880s, helping the Nazis build Auschwitz, and wooing Eastern Bloc authoritarians, he shows how in the 1990s, via a succession of hard-charging executives, Deutsche made a fateful decision to pursue Wall Street riches, often at the expense of ethics and the law.

Soon, the bank was manipulating markets, violating international sanctions to aid terrorist regimes, scamming investors, defrauding regulators, and laundering money for Russian oligarchs. 

Ever desperate for an American foothold, Deutsche also started doing business with a self-promoting real estate magnate nearly every other bank in the world deemed too dangerous to touch: Donald Trump. Over the next twenty years, Deutsche executives loaned billions to Trump, the Kushner family, and an array of scandal-tarred clients, including convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Dark Towers is the never-before-told saga of how Deutsche Bank became the global face of financial recklessness and criminality—the corporate equivalent of a weapon of mass destruction. It is also the story of a man who was consumed by fear of what he’d seen at the bank—and his son’s obsessive search for the secrets he kept.

My Four-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

     David Enrich did an incredible job of investigation to complete this story after multiple interviews with various sources (most of them insiders, and many unidentified per their request). Deutsche Bank has to rank in the Top Five All-Time Corrupt Banks. I felt squeamish after reading of many of their unscrupulous practices - - that's how immoral and greedy they were and still are

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     In spite of all the scandalous financial deals that Deutsche has been found guilty of and fined billions of dollars - - they deserve to be dismantled. I'm sure there will be more to come out.  Here's hoping Trump has to answer for some of the crap he pulled with the assistance and financial backing of Deutsche funneling Russian money to him. 

     Enrich divides the book into two sections. The first part covers the history of Deutsche bank and all the bad deals and shady arrangements it participated in decade by decade. The second part explains the role of Val Broeksmit in uncovering the evidence against Deutsche that caused his stepfather (a former senior executive at Deutsche) to commit suicide, and how that information led to major revelations regarding the reckless financial deals and criminality imbued within Deutsche.

     Aiding the Nazis party, authoritarians, laundering money for Russian oligarchs, financing Jeffrey Epstein's sex offenses, the Trump family, the Kushner family, and others. Here's hoping President-Elect Biden will reinstate the former regulations that the Trump administration loosened up, and renew tighter regulations on large banks and Wall Street.

An important book, and a commendable piece of investigative journalism.