Rosemary Vrablic, the longtime banker for Donald Trump, left Deutsche Bank AG in December after an internal investigation found she engaged in “undisclosed activities” related to a real estate deal.
Vrablic was “permitted to resign” as a result of the probe, according to a disclosure by the bank on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s BrokerCheck service. The activities included “the purchase of the property from a client-managed entity, and the formation of an unapproved outside entity to hold the investment,” the bank said in the disclosure.
Vrablic’s colleague, Dominic Scalzi, also resigned in December for the same reason, according to a separate Finra disclosure.
A representative for Frankfurt-based Deutsche Bank declined to comment beyond the information it shared with Finra, and Vrablic and Scalzi didn’t immediately respond to calls requesting comment. The New York Times reported the reason for Vrablic’s departure earlier Wednesday.
The firm in August began reviewing a real estate transaction between Vrablic and Scalzi and a company partly owned by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.
Vrablic, who worked in the private-banking division, helped manage Trump’s relationship with the bank as it loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump’s company over several years. That relationship subjected Deutsche Bank to pressure from lawmakers and prosecutors for information during Trump’s presidency.
Cutting Ties
Deutsche Bank cut ties with Trump in January following the deadly riots at the U.S. Capitol, but the former president still owes the bank more than $300 million. The total includes $125 million for Trump’s Doral golf resort in Miami due in 2023 and about $170 million for the Trump International Hotel in Washington due in 2024.
Vrablic, who grew up in the Bronx and then Scarsdale, New York, graduated from Fordham University in 1982 with an economics degree during the recession. The only job she could get was as a bank teller, according to David Enrich’s “Dark Towers,” which details the links between Trump and the German lender.
A chance meeting on a train with a Bank Leumi executive secured Vrablic a position on the Israeli bank’s credit-training group. A few years later she landed at Citicorp’s private-baking division, where she built a reputation providing large loans to wealthy New York real estate families.
Deutsche Bank recruited her in 2006 to bolster its private-banking division, handing Vrablic a guaranteed $5 million a year, according to Enrich’s book.
One of her clients was Jared Kushner, who after his marriage to Ivanka brought Trump and Vrablic together to provide financing, even as Trump was fighting with Deutsche Bank over another loan. This made Vrablic a controversial figure within the bank. In 2012, Trump tapped Deutsche Bank to finance his acquisition of Doral against the objections of the lender’s investment bankers, the book details.