SEC Fines Deutsche Bank Securities $4 Million for ‘Stale’ Suspicious Activity Reports

Deutsche Bank Securities agreed to pay a $4 million civil penalty to settle Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) charges that it failed to file certain Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) in a timely manner.

Without admitting or denying the regulatory agency’s findings, the registered broker-dealer and Deutsche Bank subsidiary agreed to a censure and a cease-and-desist order in addition to the civil penalty, the SEC said in a Friday (Dec. 20) press release.

“Even the best information collected from SARs is of limited use if it’s stale by the time it’s provided to law enforcement,” Sheldon L. Pollock, associate director of the SEC’s New York Regional Office, said in the release.

Deutsche Bank did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The SEC said in its order that its charges center on Deutsche Bank Securities’ response to some requests it received from law enforcement or regulatory agencies that required SARs investigations, according to the release.

In some instances, from April 2019 to March 2024, the company failed to complete the investigations in a reasonable amount of time — in at least two cases taking more than two years to file the SARs, the release said.

“Through this enforcement action, we are not only holding Deutsche Bank Securities accountable, we are also sending a clear message to other market registrants that timeliness in filing SARs is of paramount importance,” Pollock said in the release.

The regulatory agency has taken action against other companies in recent months in cases centering on SARs.

In November, the SEC announced settlements with three broker-dealers — Webull Financial, Lightspeed Financial Services Group and Paulson Investment Company — it charged with filing deficient suspicious activity reports.

In those cases, the regulatory agency alleged that the companies failed to include important, required information in multiple SARs filed over a four-year period.

In August, the SEC charged broker-dealer OTC Link with failing to provide numerous suspicious activity reports over a more than three-year period.

The SEC found that OTC Link failed to adopt or implement “reasonably designed” anti-money laundering (AML) policies and procedures and, as a result, did not file any SARs during that time.