Ex-Bank Executive Linked to Trump Loans Commits Suicide

Thomas Bowers, a former Deutsche Bank executive who is said to have approved some of the financial services company’s loans to President Donald Trump, committed suicide earlier this month, according to Los Angeles Magazine.

Bowers, who headed up the bank’s U.S. wealth-management operations, reportedly supervised the president’s private banker, Rosemary Vrablic, a managing director at the firm. Of the various loans Deutsche Bank extended to President Trump was one for over $100 million to purchase the Trump National Doral in Miami, Florida. Upon Vrablic’s hiring in 2006, Bowers called her “one of the top private bankers to the U.S. ultra high-net-worth community.”

Bowers departed Deutsche Bank in 2015 and later become COO of the Starwood Capital Group and a board member of the Opus Bank.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s office said the 55-year-old business executive hung himself in Malibu.

In April, two House committees subpoenaed Deutsche Bank as part of a sweeping probe into President Trump’s previous financial activities, with a particular focus on his tax return records.

At the time, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) stated that the subpoenas were designed to assist his panel’s review into allegations of “potential foreign influence” on U.S. elections. In a separate statement, House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) said of the probe that “the potential use of the U.S. financial system for illicit purposes is a very serious concern.”

In October, a federal appeals court confirmed that Deutsche Bank was not in possession of President Trump’s tax return records. The president has sued in an attempt to prohibit House Democrats from obtaining the documents.