⚠ what this page is about, and what it is not
The Deutsche Bank wealth-management director who carried the Epstein relationship, and who in October 2018 put the bank’s own KYC review of Epstein’s past in front of a control officer. No allegation against him was found anywhere in the release, and none is made here. ⚠ He is the person who raised the alarm in the document read for this page.
| Who | Stewart Oldfield, CFA, CAIA. Director, Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas / Deutsche Bank Wealth Management, per his own signature block1 |
| In the release | Present in the released material; this page rests on the documents cited in its footnotes2 |
| His own messages | He writes in the release himself, not only as a name in other people’s messages, 20 May 2011 to 1 December 20212 |
| ⭐ The act, 9 Oct 2018 | ”Kim, This just surfaced in our latest KYC reviews. Let’s discuss what info I need from the client and then next steps. Thanks” — under it, a link to a filed Ponzi-scheme complaint3 |
| ⚠ The control officer’s reply, 12:15 that day | ”Was this returned as an RDC alert — or part of the regular Lexis/Nexis due diligence?”3 |
| ⚠⚠ What the bank then asked itself | ”Why was this suit brought against Mr. Epstein? What was his connection to Hoffenberg?” … “Did he serve as a ‘consultant’ to TFC?” … “Has Andrew reviewed the information and is he comfortable maintaining the relationship with Mr. Epstein and his related entities?”3 |
| The subject line | ”Epstein - negative media”, a recurring subject on his own messages2 |
9 October 2018: the review that surfaced Towers
Oldfield sent one short message to a managing director in the bank’s control function, copying a colleague, and pasted a link to a PDF of a Ponzi-scheme class-action complaint hosted on a litigation-reporting site. The whole message is the two sentences quoted above.3
⚠ What made it a KYC matter was the identity of the co-defendant. The control officer’s later questions make the subject explicit: Hoffenberg, and “TFC”. ⚠⚠ This desk does not expand “TFC” from the sheet and does not narrate the underlying history here, because the document does not; what the document establishes is that in October 2018 Deutsche Bank was asking what its client’s connection to that matter had been.3
The bank’s four questions
On 22 October 2018 at 2:30 PM the control officer wrote to an assistant vice president, copying Oldfield and two others, under “Classification: For internal use only”:
It is hard for me to comment without additional information. I am comforted by the fact that the case was dismissed but it would be helpful to know the following:
(1) Why was this suit brought against Mr. Epstein? What was his connection to Hoffenberg?
(2) What was told to you by Mr. Epstein or his representatives regarding the claims? Did he serve as a “consultant” to TFC?
(3) Why were the claims dismissed?
(4) Has Andrew reviewed the information and is he comfortable maintaining the relationship with Mr. Epstein and his related entities?
⚠ Question (4) is the one that decides the account, and it is addressed to a named colleague rather than answered on the sheet.3
What the approval was actually for
Four days earlier, on 18 October, the assistant vice president had written to the same control officer:
AML Compliance (Yoonsun) has requested that we receive your approval to move forward on all Southern Financial/Epstein KYC remediation’s.
As per your discussions with Stew regarding the latest lawsuit against Jeffrey, please find the attached ‘Notice of Dismissal’ dated 10/5/18.
As this occurred after your approval on 10/2/17, please confirm again that we are comfortable moving forward.
⚠⚠ THREE THINGS THIS SHEET ESTABLISHES. The whole of the Epstein and Southern Financial KYC remediation was waiting on one control officer’s approval. A prior approval had been given on 2 October 2017. The document offered to settle the question was a notice of dismissal dated 5 October 2018, four days before the media item surfaced. ⚠ The notice of dismissal itself is an attachment and is not in this document.3
31 October to 1 November: how the thread ends
Nine days later the control officer was still waiting. “Were you able to obtain the additional details from the client as discussed with Andrew?” she wrote at 9:00 PM. Oldfield answered at 11:05 PM: “I’m talking to his CFO tmw for more details. Missed him the last few days while I was in sales training. Sorry for the delay. Thanks.”3
The last two messages on the sheet are not about Epstein at all. At 6:48 the next morning: “No worries - was just checking in. How is the training?” At 7:02:
Just finished yesterday. It’s good but they stretched a day and half of material into two and a half days. All in a windowless room in the basement of 60 Wall …
⚠ The desk prints this because a compliance escalation that tails off into small talk is a documented fact about how the review was conducted, and because no document read for this page records an answer to any of the four questions.3
What the rest of the traffic is
Recurring subject strings on his messages include “trading meeting”, “Epstein Insurance Trust”, “Epstein - negative media”, “RM0082289 Daily Deposit Report”, “Pending responses on rejection cases under the SOUTHERN FINANCIAL RELATIONSHIP”, “Gratitude”, “Haze Trust”, “URGENT!!! Need to close accounts ASAP - please prioritize today” and “Reinsurance deal”. ⚠ These are subject strings the desk read without opening the documents. It opened ONE document for this page and characterises none of the others.2
What this page does not say
No allegation against him was found anywhere in the release.4
⚠⚠ NOTHING HERE SUGGESTS HE DID ANYTHING IMPROPER, AND THE DOCUMENT SHOWS HIM RAISING THE ISSUE. ⚠ Whether Deutsche Bank’s review was adequate, and what was decided, are institutional questions that belong at Deutsche Bank. The answer is not in the document read here.
Related
Footnotes
Footnotes
-
Identification. Title, post-nominals and employer are taken from his own signature block as it prints on the sheets read for this page:
Stewart Oldfield, CFA, CAIA / Director / Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas / Deutsche Bank Wealth Management / 345 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10154. ⚠ Telephone, mobile and e-mail are redacted on every sheet read and none is supplied. The address is a bank office, not a residence. ↩ -
Scope. ⚠ The desk did not read in full the released material that names him, and does not characterise it here: this page rests on the documents cited in these footnotes. ⚠ The subjects listed on this page are subject strings, not documents the desk opened, and some appear in truncated forms. ⚠ No
doc_typefigure is printed, because the classifier is unreliable outside e-mail headers. ⚠ No deduplicated message total is stated. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 -
9 October to 1 November 2018. EFTA01423573, a seven-sheet chain carrying ten messages, subject
Epstein - negative media [I], every sheet markedClassification: For internal use only. Four sheets were rendered and READ AT THE IMAGE at 700 dpi: EFTA01423573 p.1 (1 Nov, the training exchange), p.3 (22 Oct 2:30 PM, the four questions), p.5 (18 Oct 5:22 PM, the approval request) and p.7 (9 Oct 11:03 AM, Oldfield’s original). The remaining three sheets were read in the text layer. ⚠ Page stamps run EFTA01423573 to EFTA01423579, one per sheet; the run is filed under the first. Quotations preserve the double spaces as printed. ⚠ Five further Deutsche Bank people are named on these sheets and four are left unnamed on this page, because nothing here turns on them; the two whose words are quoted are described by role. ⚠ No e-mail address is reproduced on this page. ⚠ The linked complaint, and the attached ‘Notice of Dismissal’ dated 10/5/18, are NOT in this document and were not read; nothing on this page describes their contents. ⚠⚠ No document read for this page records any answer to the four questions, any decision, or what the client’s CFO said. Copies of parts of the same chain exist at EFTA01425627, EFTA01376468, EFTA01383240 and EFTA01384811; none was separately rendered. Two of those sheets carryCONFIDENTIAL - PURSUANT TO FED. R. CRIM. P. 6(e)with Deutsche Bank and SDNY production stamps. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 -
Absences, each scoped. No allegation against him was found in the release read for this page. ⚠⚠ This is a narrow check against a population the desk did not read in full, and is stated as one: the desk opened one chain. It ran no systematic adverse sweep, searched no derived store, and opened none of the other subject groups listed above. ⚠ A deeper pass is owed, and this page records the debt rather than implying it does not exist. ↩