What's A Former Senior Deutsche Bank Exec Doing Hanging Out With Michael Cohen?

Last Friday, as Michael Cohen's attorney was trying to suppress the evidence taken in the raids on his home and office, Cohen himself was hanging outside on Park Avenue, smoking cigars with a bunch of his friends. On Sunday, the Guardian identified one of those hanging around with Cohen, admittedly farther in the background, as a man named Jerry Rotonda.

Like many of Cohen's friends, Rotonda has a history of thuggery, threatening a meter maid with violence and racial slurs over a $20 parking ticket that resulted in a civil injunction against Rotonda. And like Cohen and many of his friends, that history of thuggery did not stop Rotonda from advancing into fairly lucrative careers. In fact, Rotonda ended up as Chief Financial Officer of Deutsche Bank's (DB) wealth management division, meaning he probably dealt with extremely high net worth individuals. Since the Guardian report, it appears that Rotonda's LinkedIn profile has been taken down and my limited research has not found much about his history or length of service with DB. Nor have I discovered whether he was just a regional or global head.

The answers to those question might be interesting to know. It is worth noting that DB engaged in a $10 billion money laundering scheme for wealthy Russians between 2011 and 2015. The process used mirror trades with the complicity of individuals in DB's Moscow and London offices in order to move billions of rubles out of Russia to a variety of offshore entities and convert that money into Dollars and Euros. Was Rotonda responsible for wealth management in Russia and/or the UK? Did any of the money that ended up in these offshore entities then go to finance Trump Organization deals?

Since the early 2000s, Donald Trump has not been able to get financing from any legitimate bank except one, Deutsche Bank. Since the late 1990s, DB has provided Trump with over $3.5 billion in loans and loan guarantees. According to Trump's most recent financial disclosure form, Trump still owes over $130 million to the bank. In addition, the bank has recently flagged suspicious activity in accounts controlled by Jared Kushner. Did Rotonda's climb up the corporate ladder at DB coincide with loans to Trump and others involved in other money-laundering schemes? Was Rotonda involved in any way with Michael Cohen's real estate investments?

Interestingly, Rotonda quit his job at DB late last year and went into business with an Indian billionaire and a man named Rotem Rosen, who was also there hanging out with Cohen. Rosen and another Russian expatriate, Alex Sapir, accompanied Trump on his trip to Moscow and the Miss Universe pageant in 2013, where they helped push Trump's dream of a Trump Tower Moscow. Sapir's father was an original investor in the failed Trump SoHo project. Rosen, in addition to getting married down at Mar-a-Lago to Sapir's sister, is the right hand man of Lev Leviev, a partner in Prevezon Holdings that was recently charged with money-laundering tax scheme in violation of the Magnitsky Act. Prevezon settled that suit for $6 million. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort with the promise of supplying dirt on Hillary, also worked for Prevezon Holdings. In addition, at some point Prevezon had also hired Fusion GPS, the firm behind the Steele dossier, to do some work for the firm. Oh what a tangled web!! Was Rotonda overseeing accounts held at DB by Rotem, Sapir, or any of their associates? Was he or DB involved in the Prevezon money laundering?

So many questions and, right now, so few answers. I'm sure Robert Mueller has been working on some of these questions for months. And I'm also sure that investigative reporters have and will be doing the same. But the emergence of Rotonda in the Cohen inner circle opens up a lot of questions about Deutsche Bank and its long history of deals with Trump and money-launderers.

Finally, Cohen took a lot of criticism from the punditocracy and angered the judge who chastised Cohen's lawyer by saying "Your inability to answer these questions suggest to me that your client, Mr. Cohen, should be in court with you next time." But Cohen's flagrant flaunting of the hearing and openly meeting with a bunch of cronies where he knew the press would be recording them suggests that Cohen was sending a clear message to someone, most likely Donald Trump. One clear interpretation is that Cohen was telling Trump that I've got all the elements of the case against you - the money launderers, the bankers, the Russian connection - and they are all hanging with me. Whether that means that Cohen is signaling that they are all sticking together to protect Trump or that he and his friends will band together to protect themselves but not the President remains to be seen.