German police raid Deutsche Bank

German prosecutors raided several Deutsche Bank offices in the Frankfurt area yesterday over suspicions of money laundering based on revelations from the 2016 "Panama Papers" data leak.

Prosecutors said they were investigating allegations that Germany's biggest lender helped clients set up offshore companies in tax havens to "transfer money from criminal activities" to Deutsche Bank accounts.

The latest raid was a new blow to the financial institution that has been hammered by a string of scandals linked to its pre-2008 crisis attempts to compete with Wall Street investment banking giants.

Some 170 police officers and investigators from the Frankfurt prosecutor's office were searching six of the bank's premises in and around the city, the prosecutors said in a statement.

The Panama Papers scandal that erupted in 2016 with a massive data leak from Panamaian legal firm Mossack Fonseca exposed large-scale tax evasion, laying bare how the world's wealthy and powerful stashed their assets in offshore businesses.

Deutsche Bank was among hundreds of financial institutions whose names cropped up in the media reports.

The raids are the latest embarrassment for embattled Deutsche Bank, which has repeatedly been rapped by regulators for lax money laundering controls.