Trump's longtime banker at Deutsche Bank resigns

Donald Trump's longtime banker at Deutsche Bank has resigned. Photo / AP

President Donald Trump's longtime banker at Deutsche Bank, who arranged for the German lender to make hundreds of millions of dollars of loans to his company, is stepping down from the bank.

Rosemary Vrablic, a managing director and senior banker in Deutsche Bank's wealth management division, recently handed in her resignation, which the bank accepted, according to a bank spokesman, Daniel Hunter.

"I've chosen to resign my position with the bank effective December 31 and am looking forward to my retirement," Vrablic, 60, said in a statement Tuesday.

The reasons for Vrablic's abrupt resignation were not clear. Deutsche Bank in August opened an internal review into a 2013 real estate transaction between Vrablic and a company owned in part by Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Trump and a client. Dominic Scalzi, a longtime colleague of Vrablic who played a role in that transaction, will also leave the bank.

Vrablic and Scalzi joined Deutsche Bank in 2006 from Bank of America. Vrablic quickly made a name for herself as one of her division's leading rainmakers. In 2011, she landed a prominent new client: Trump, who for decades had been mostly off-limits to the mainstream banking world because of his tendency to default on loans. With her bosses' approval, Vrablic agreed to a series of loans, totaling well over US$300 million, for his newly acquired Doral golf resort in Florida, for his troubled Chicago skyscraper and for the transformation of the Old Post Office building in Washington into a luxury hotel.

When Trump became president, his relationship with Deutsche Bank came under a microscope by regulators, prosecutors and congressional Democrats. Vrablic's starring role in the suddenly controversial relationship — she was a VIP guest at Trump's inauguration — pushed the publicity-shy banker into the spotlight.

The relationship between Trump and the German bank is the subject of congressional, civil and criminal investigations. In New York City, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. has been investigating whether Trump committed financial crimes as he sought to get loans from Deutsche Bank.

A lawyer for Scalzi confirmed that he was resigning from the bank.

Trump's key contacts at his biggest financial backer are leaving at a perilous time for the departing president. He owes Deutsche Bank about US$330 million, and the loans come due in 2023 and 2024. Trump provided a personal guarantee to get the loans, meaning that if he fails to pay them back, the bank can pursue his personal assets.

Deutsche Bank's internal review has focused, at least in part, on a Park Avenue apartment in Manhattan that Vrablic, Scalzi and another Deutsche Bank colleague purchased for about US$1.5 million from a company called Bergel 715 Associates in June 2013. Kushner held an ownership stake in that company at the time.

Banks usually bar employees from doing personal business with clients because of the potential for conflicts of interest.

After being contacted by The New York Times in August, Deutsche Bank officials started reviewing the transaction "and the fact pattern from 2013," Hunter, the bank spokesman, said at the time.

The status and scope of that review, which may include other transactions, is not clear, but Deutsche Bank officials previously said they hoped it would be completed by the end of the year.

At the time of the real estate transaction, Vrablic was rapidly expanding Deutsche Bank's relationship with the Trumps and Kushners. It was Kushner who, in 2011, invited Vrablic to Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet his father-in-law, who was radioactive to most large banks.

Vrablic and her boss championed the Trump relationship. But it was polarising inside the bank. Some senior executives argued it was too risky to lend to Trump, given his history of not repaying loans, including in 2008 when he defaulted on a large loan from Deutsche Bank on his Chicago skyscraper. Those concerns, however, were overruled, and the relationship with Trump progressed.

As they sought more loans, Trump and his representatives provided Deutsche Bank with financial statements that appeared to substantially overstate the value of some of his company's real estate and other assets, according to current and former bank executives, as well as congressional testimony last year from Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen.

That is one focus of the criminal investigation by Vance, the Manhattan district attorney. Since the November election, his prosecutors have interviewed Deutsche Bank officials about the bank's lending policies and procedures, and bank executives expect that prosecutors will summon employees to testify before a grand jury.

Since their initial meeting, Vrablic became friendly with Trump and Kushner. In an interview with The Times in early 2016, Trump repeatedly and incorrectly referred to Vrablic as "the head of Deutsche Bank."

"She is the boss," Trump said.

Written by: David Enrich
© 2021 THE NEW YORK TIMES