That’s really a hideous banking practice. Banks need to protect their shareholders by doing full appraisals on all loans. They have a fiduciary responsibility to do so. So who has actually committed fraud in this case? I sense that with a little investigation you would find that Deutsche Bank has been repeatedly lying and cutting corners that had a negative impact of it shareholders. Contrast to the Trump Organization actually repaying their loans and benefiting many in the process.
Deutsche Bank has failed its Federal Reserve stress test and is on the verge of bankruptcy. Perhaps the cause is Deutsche Bank‘s business practices or lack there of.
The disclaimers say, among other things, that the financial statements aren’t audited and that others “might reach different conclusions” about Trump’s financial position if they had more information.
Financial statements, in general, come in three flavors: audits, reviews, and compilations.
The first two have a sizable amount of rigor around valuations, generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), and testing and control evaluations.
Compilations are barely worth the paper on which they’re printed.
We will save tax returns for a separate day in class.
Trump’s financial data sounds like a collection of compilations.
Any banker with a brain will adjust these compiled statements. Indeed, audits are often adjusted, too.
These explanation for WHY banks will use crappy statements involves things like competition, capitalism, and optimizing shareholder value while managing risk.
Criminalizing use of this data, especially when the quality of the data was fully-disclosed, is patently absurd.
Trump defaulted on hundreds of millions of dollars on loans from Deutche bank. Research the Trump tower in Chicago.