The Same Banker: Deutsche Bank, Epstein, and Kushner
The same relationship manager handled both Epstein's & Kushner's accounts. One month after Epstein died, prosecutors asked about merging their investigations.
In July 2020, New York’s Department of Financial Services fined Deutsche Bank $150 million for its relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. The coverage treated this as its own scandal, separate from Deutsche Bank’s Trump loans, separate from Kushner Companies’ banking relationship, separate from the $10 billion in Russian money the bank had moved through mirror trades.
We were told these were different problems that happened to involve the same bank.
The House Oversight Committee documents tell a different story. One month after Epstein died, federal prosecutors were asking whether to merge his case with an existing Kushner investigation.
The same compliance officer reviewed both accounts while the same relationship manager handled them both. Epstein had also been tracking Kushner’s financial vulnerabilities in real time and sharing that intelligence with his network.
Then the people who could explain how these accounts connected started dying.
What Prosecutors Were Asking
September 16, 2019. One month after Epstein died in federal custody, prosecutors at the Southern District of New York exchanged emails about ongoing investigations:
“DB part of Epstein case (or the Epstein part of DB)”
They discussed whether to create a “separate UMR or tagged onto the DB/Kushner UMR” and referenced a “pre-existing DB SAR investigation.”
I believe DB is Deutsche Bank and UMR is an Urgent Matter Report.
Apparently someone wasn’t happy another person was added accidentally to the email: “Wrong [redacted] cc’d. Ridiculous.”
But more importantly, they were asking whether to combine his case with an existing Deutsche Bank and Kushner investigation. They saw connections significant enough to consider merging it all together.
The $150 million fine that came eight months later treated the Epstein relationship as its own problem but it looks like prosecutors had been looking at something bigger.
Why They Were Asking
The FBI interviewed Tammy Hill McFadden on July 12, 2019. She was a Deutsche Bank anti-money laundering compliance officer who had reviewed both Epstein and Kushner accounts.
McFadden flagged the Epstein account in 2015 after finding wires to young women and payments to a French art gallery. Her supervisor Sheri Quigley responded: “EPSTEIN served his time.”
But McFadden told investigators the same relationship manager, identified in the notes as (ROSE), handled both Epstein and Kushner accounts. She reviewed Real Contrad LLC, a Kushner entity, and found cryptocurrency transactions. She examined activity from July and August 2016.
She told the FBI she found the overlap “mind boggling.”
Real Contrad appeared to be paying an employee in cryptocurrency. McFadden searched for this person and found a website that looked completely fabricated. No photo, just an avatar. The job description looked bogus. When she checked Kushner’s actual corporate websites, this person wasn’t listed anywhere.
McFadden was terminated in 2018. She recommended accounts be closed but her cases were closed instead.
The 102 Hidden Names
McFadden told investigators something else. In December 2015, she ran a formula to check case statuses and found 102 politically exposed persons sitting in a status called “deferred.” PEPs are high-risk individuals who require enhanced due diligence. They should never be hidden in a system status that McFadden described as basically existing in cyberspace.
All 102 had been placed into deferred status by the same person: Ying Wang, who sat next to Quigley in the New York office.
When investigators asked McFadden if Trump or Kushner were among the 102 hidden PEPs, she said she didn’t know. The FBI notes indicate she was never allowed to complete her review.
The Banker Who Could Have Explained Everything
The House Oversight documents identify Rosemary Vrablic as Trump’s personal banker at Deutsche Bank. Vrablic was supervised by Thomas Bowers, who headed the private wealth division and set up Epstein’s accounts. According to reporting, he visited Epstein’s island and he oversaw the relationship manager who handled both Epstein and Kushner.
In November 2019, Thomas Bowers was found hanged in his Malibu home while the FBI was actively seeking to interview him about Epstein’s banking activities.
The official story treats Deutsche Bank’s Epstein fine, Trump loans, and Kushner relationships as separate matters but it looks like the man who oversaw all of them is dead.
Who Was Positioned to Receive the Evidence
This is where I need you to follow the logic with me.
Suspicious Activity Reports filed by banks go to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCEN, which is part of the Treasury Department. FinCEN receives these reports and coordinates with law enforcement when financial crimes are detected.
In February 2019, five months before Epstein was arrested, Mary Daly left her position as director of Opioid Enforcement and Prevention Efforts in the deputy attorney general’s office to a new job at FinCEN. Why does that matter?
Mary Daly is Bill Barr’s daughter.
For anyone not as familiar, Bill Barr is the Attorney General who oversaw the federal response to Epstein’s death. He did not recuse himself despite the fact that his father, Donald Barr, likely hired Epstein to teach at the Dalton School in 1974. Donald Barr is said to have given a college dropout with no credentials access to the children of Manhattan’s elite families. One year later, Epstein was pushed out for inappropriate behavior with students.
When I look at this all together, here’s the structure that was in place when prosecutors were asking whether to merge the Epstein and Kushner investigations:
The Attorney General overseeing the Epstein case was the son of the man who gave Epstein his first access to wealthy families. That Attorney General’s daughter was positioned at the agency that receives suspicious activity reports from banks. The compliance officer who flagged both Epstein and Kushner accounts had been fired. The SARs she tried to file had been suppressed at the bank level.
In September 2019, after Epstein’s death, JPMorgan filed a massive suspicious activity report flagging approximately 4,700 transactions totaling over $1 billion. As JPMorgan spokesperson Patricia Wexler later stated: “It does not appear that anyone in the government or law enforcement acted on those SARs for years.”
I actually found the SAR from 2019 when I was writing another article about Epstein’s involvement in the 2008 stockmarket crash.
What Epstein Knew About Kushner
While I was looking for some more documents on Kushner I found some things that just didn’t make sense with what we are being told. Epstein was tracking Kushner’s financial vulnerabilities in real time and sharing that intelligence.
December 2017. Shaher Abdulhak, a Yemeni billionaire businessman who exchanged hundreds of emails with Epstein calling him “cousin brother”, wrote:
“Sad heart about your friends The Saudi MBS and Kushner”
He didn’t call them by titles like “the Saudi crown prince and the president’s son-in-law.”, he called them “your friends.”
Epstein responded: “I think they are both very dismayed by the assassination”
They were discussing Ali Abdullah Saleh’s killing. Saleh served as president of reunified Yemen (1990–2012). His presidency ended after a yearlong popular uprising in Yemen (2011–12) forced him to step down. Abdulhak replied: “They were the cause - who payed the eggs for alhouthi’s to sit on”
Saleh had been allied with the Houthis in Yemen's civil war, then switched sides to support the Saudi-led coalition. The Houthis killed him for the betrayal. Abdulhak was saying MBS and Kushner funded the conditions that led to the assassination, that they paid for the Houthis to be in a position where Saleh's defection became fatal. He was attributing a Middle East assassination to MBS and Kushner. He referred to them as Epstein's friends and Epstein did not correct him.
This was December 2017. Kushner was a senior White House official handling Middle East policy. Two months earlier, he had made an unannounced trip to Riyadh where he reportedly stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. multiple nights with MBS. A week after Kushner returned, MBS launched his anti-corruption crackdown, arresting dozens of Saudi royals and imprisoning them in the Ritz Carlton.
The Intercept later reported that MBS bragged to the Emirati crown prince that Kushner was “in his pocket.” Sources said Kushner had discussed the names of Saudis disloyal to the crown prince, information from the Presidential Daily Brief that Kushner read avidly before losing his top secret clearance.
Four months after this email exchange, Epstein would introduce Abdulhak to Steve Bannon. This doesn’t have much to do with Kushner directly unless you consider the fact Bannon created the MAGA movement which gave Kushner access to the power he currently has.
On the exact same day that Kushner was called his friend, December 23, 2017, Epstein received another email. His accountant Richard Kahn forwarded him an article about prosecutors subpoenaing Kushner Companies’ Deutsche Bank records.
Subject line: “Kushner Companies | Deutsche Bank | Kushner EB-5”
So if Kushner has nothing to do with the Epstein network, then why, on the same day, were two people in Epstein’s network were tracking Kushner? It looks to me like Epstein was monitoring Kushner’s vulnerabilities from multiple angles simultaneously.
July 2017. Someone else forwarded an Intercept article about Kushner’s failed attempt to get Qatari financing for 666 Fifth Avenue.
Jabor: “Interesting.”
This was during the period when Qatar faced a blockade that reporting attributed to Kushner’s influence. The Intercept reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson believed Trump’s anti-Qatar tweets were “written by UAE Ambassador Yousef Al-Otaiba and delivered to the president by Jared Kushner himself.”
It looks to me like a pattern. Qatar refused to bail out the Kushners. U.S. foreign policy punished Qatar. Qatar, through Brookfield Asset Management (partly owned by Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund), eventually paid up with a $1.28 billion lease. Epstein was tracking this desperation and sharing it with his network before anyone bailed Kushner out.
February 2018. Kahn forwarded Epstein a New York Times article about Kushner’s loans from Apollo and Citigroup:
“not great for Josh or APO..”
Josh is Joshua Kushner. APO is Apollo Global Management.
Leon Black, Apollo’s founder, paid Epstein approximately $158 million for “advisory services”. Apollo later provided financing for the Brookfield deal that bailed out 666 Fifth Avenue.
Epstein’s accountant reacted to Kushner’s Apollo loans by expressing concern for both “Josh” and “APO.” He was familiar with both sides of this relationship. He didn’t say “Joshua Kushner” or “Kushner’s brother.” He said “Josh.” Like someone he knows.
The Whistleblower Emails
In 2019, months before Epstein’s arrest, a man named Christopher Dilorio who has been called a whistleblower was sending emails to FinCEN with the subject line “Apollo/Epstein/Kushner connection.”
He wrote about how Apollo provided financing for the Brookfield 666 Fifth Avenue deal, writing it “was brokered by Apollo/Epstein Degenerate Black/Harris/Rowan.”
He noted: “Apollo and other Kushner financing pal Blackstone just happen to be BOTH granted free reign on the US insurance/annuity industry.”
These emails appear in the House Oversight Committee release, which suggests to me investigators found them relevant. I say that because I imagine the FBI received more “tips” than we can count, but this made it in.
What Does It Mean?
So now what? What can we learn from it all? What can be done?
There is one more document I want to share that I think helps make sense of everything. This is an FBI FD-1023 form from October 2020. An FD-1023 is not a tip line call or an anonymous email. It is how the FBI formally documents information from a confidential human source, meaning someone the Bureau has vetted and established an ongoing relationship with. These are people the FBI considers credible enough to keep talking to.
This source reported both of these claims:
“CHS remembered Dershowitz tell Alex Acosta (U.S. Attorney of Southern District of Florida at the time) that Epstein belonged to both U.S. and allied intelligence services.”
And in the same document:
“Kushner has moved a lot of Russian investment money around. The FBI should investigate Kushner’s family charities to find evidence of corruption and money laundering.”
The same vetted informant connected Epstein to intelligence and Kushner to Russian money in a single report. This aligns with what McFadden found at Deutsche Bank when she reviewed both accounts and called the overlap “mind boggling.”
The claim about Acosta matters because he gave Epstein the 2008 plea deal. According to the Daily Beast, Acosta later told Trump’s transition team he was told Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and to “leave it alone.”
When You Put It All Together…
At this point I feel like I have uncovered a lot but I am still digging into all of this. It feels incredibly important, so here is where I am with all of this, you tell me if this feels like something our officials shouldn’t need us to tell them to look into:
In September 2019, prosecutors asked whether to merge the Epstein and Kushner investigations. Two months later, Thomas Bowers, the Deutsche Bank executive I mentioned earlier who supervised the overlap between these accounts, was found hanged while the FBI was actively trying to interview him. The compliance officer who flagged both accounts and called the overlap “mind boggling” was fired. The 102 politically exposed persons she found hidden in Deutsche Bank’s system were never identified. JPMorgan flagged over $1 billion in suspicious Epstein transactions and, according to their own spokesperson, no one in government acted on it for years.
Then, six months after leaving the White House, Kushner collected $2 billion from MBS after the Saudi fund’s own advisors objected. MBS overruled them.
“Affinity’s investors may not be motivated by commercial considerations,” Senator Wyden wrote, “but rather the opportunity to funnel foreign government money to members of President Trump’s family.”
The documents show Epstein’s network calling MBS and Kushner “your friends” years earlier while discussing a Middle East assassination. The same day, his accountant was tracking Kushner’s Deutsche Bank subpoenas. A whistleblower was mapping the Apollo-Epstein-Kushner connections months before Epstein was even arrested.
Prosecutors saw a network and that is why they asked about merging the investigations. Then the witnesses died, the $150 million fine treated Epstein as a separate problem, and Kushner collected his $2 billion.
What were the 102 names? What would Thomas Bowers have told the FBI? What happened to the investigation prosecutors were building?
We were not told the truth about any of this and it’s time we got some answers.
-Kait Justice
My brain is breaking. This is something I might expect to see in the NYT. I can’t believe you put all this together. The corruption and the level of disgust is beyond anything I ever could have imagined! Thank you for this important work.
Kait!! This is amazing information! You lay it out so clearly!! Well done 🥳👏🏻👏🏻. I hope Crockett, Raskin already have this info from you! Thanks for all your hard work!