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Deutsche Bank 'shelter' arrest
Allan Hall19.11.08
Deutsche Bank is under renewed pressure from American financial watchdogs after a lawyer was arrested for setting up dubious tax shelters through the bank in the name of Homer Simpson.
John Ohle III was an executive at Bank One before it was acquired by JPMorgan Chase in 2004. Deutsche Bank, which has been under criminal investigation over its tax-shelter work between the late 1990s and 2001, has been named as arranging the financial transactions that Ohle sold.
The shelter, known as Homer, allowed wealthy clients to falsely generate bogus tax losses of almost $430 million (£286 million), and to evade taxes of $103 million, claim prosecutors in the Southern District of New York. They are also leading the inquiry of Deutsche Bank.
Prosecutors have been examining Deutsche for its role in two "abusive" tax shelters that were sold to investors and involved collaboration between banks, law firms and accountants.
