Deutsche Bank, Germany's biggest bank, has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a tax fraud case brought by the US Justice Department, the federal prosecutor in charge has announced. Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Deutsche Bank used a "web of shell companies and calculated transactions" to try to evade paying tens of millions of dollars in taxes.

The US government "has made Deutsche Bank admit to its actions designed to avoid taxes and pay $95 million to the United States to account for this conduct," the prosecutor said in a statement Wednesday. The case dates back to 2000 with Deutsche Bank's acquisition of a US holding company, Charter, which had stock in Bristol-Myers Squibb, the pharmaceutical company. To avoid paying high taxes on the gain from the sale of the stock, Deutsche Bank is alleged to have arranged to sell it to a shell company, and then to buy it back.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2017