Ex-Deutsche Bank Executive Claims He Was Fired for Whistleblowing

(Bloomberg) — A former senior Deutsche Bank AG operations executive alleged in a lawsuit that he was illegally fired over a concocted racial bias complaint after he raised concerns that the bank was lying to US regulators.

Noah Ramos filed suit Monday in New York state court. He claims that, shortly after he was made head of Americas operations for Deutsche Bank Securities in October 2023, he learned that the company’s lending business had improperly accrued $173 million in receivables due to “a lack of operational controls and general negligence in operations.”

Ramos says he reported the matter to more senior bank executives, urging them to self-report the issue to the Federal Reserve. But he alleges that his superiors appeared to want to avoid recognizing a significant loss in the lending business and chose instead to tell the Fed that the accumulation was due to faulty accounting at other Deutsche Bank units.

He “observed DB’s highest ranking executives, who were also his direct supervisors, laughing and joking that the Federal Reserve appeared to ‘have bought’ DB’s lie about ‘accounting errors,’” Ramos said in his suit, which is seeking at least $100 million in damages.

“The allegations made in this claim have been thoroughly investigated and were determined to have no merit,” a Deutsche Bank spokesperson said in a statement. “We will vigorously defend ourselves.”

According to Ramos, he was accused in January 2024 of “engaging in anti-Asian bias” over comments he made about wrapping paper depicting the popular Japanese cartoon character “Hello Kitty.”

Ramos claims the bias allegation was “ridiculous on its face” but resulted in an intensive human-resources probe, during which he was subject to “repeated five-to-ten hour long integration sessions.” He alleges this was part of an effort to “provide cover for the real reason DB wanted to terminate Mr. Ramos’ employment: he had engaged in protected whistleblowing activity.” 

He says in his suit that the bias complaint resulted in his termination for cause in February 2024. Ramos says Deutsche Bank’s “defamatory” reason for firing him was reflected in his Financial Industry Regulatory Authority U-5 form and has had a “significant detrimental impact” on his career.

In his suit, Ramos notes that the bank agreed to pay $186 million in 2023 after a Federal Reserve investigation found that it failed to put in place sufficient measures to prevent money laundering after earlier violations, and that the company paid about $9 billion in fines and settlements with financial regulators and others “for a vast range of wrongdoing” between 2008 and 2016.

The case is Ramos v. Deutsche Bank Securities, New York State Supreme Court, New York County.

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com