ft.comA mid-level executive sacked by Deutsche Bank over a spying scandal has alleged that colleagues above and around him knew “from the beginning” about a plan hatched in 2006 to find out more about a dissident shareholder.
A lawyer for Wolfram Schmitt, formerly the bank’s global head of investor relations, claimed the bank’s legal unit and a senior communications executive knew that Clemens Börsig, Deutsche’s chairman, had requested more information about the investor. Mr Schmitt’s lawyer, Manuel Rhotert, told a Frankfurt labour court on Thursday that the meeting at which the issue was first raised “was not a tête-à-tête” between Mr Börsig and Mr Schmitt and that “there are questions” about the involvement of the bank’s legal department and the head of financial markets communication, Gurdon Wattles.
The contention by Mr Schmitt seeks to raise doubt about who exactly knew about the spying and whether knowledge of it may have been more widespread within the bank than Deutsche Bank has acknowledged.
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