The Munich public prosecutor's office searched the fund house's business premises. There is a suspicion that an employee of the Bavarian Supply Chamber may have been bribed.
Düsseldorf, Berlin. The crisis at the Deutsche Finance Group in Munich is coming to a head. Investigators from the public prosecutor's office searched the fund house's offices on Tuesday. “In an investigation by the Munich I public prosecutor’s office, search warrants were executed yesterday at the Deutsche Finance Group’s business premises,” the prosecutors confirmed when asked on Wednesday morning. The authority “can only provide further information in a few days”.
Bloomberg first reported on the raid. The background is joint real estate investments between Deutsche Finance and the Bavarian Supply Chamber in the USA, as the fund house confirmed on its homepage.
According to Handelsblatt research, prosecutors are investigating the suspicion that Deutsche Finance managers may have bribed employees of the Bavarian Supply Chamber (BVK) with trips and benefits.
Deutsche Finance emphasized that it was searched as a “third party”. The company is cooperating with the investigative authorities and has been in contact with them for a long time. Furthermore, the company does not want to comment due to the ongoing proceedings. When asked, the BVK declined to comment.
There has been a heated dispute over BVK's US real estate investments for a long time. The chamber had invested around 1.6 billion euros in US real estate, which was organized through Deutsche Finance fund structures. As a result of these deals, BVK faces losses of up to 800 million euros. BVK, which manages the pension provision of more than 2.8 million people, had to write off 163 million euros.
When dealing with the investment disaster, the BVK came across what it saw as a striking closeness between a BVK manager and an executive at Deutsche Finance. She terminated the manager without notice and the case ended up before the Munich Labor Court.
The court viewed the immediate termination as ineffective for formal reasons, but made it clear that it saw significant breaches of duty on the part of the manager. The topics discussed included several overnight stays by the manager in a 75 square meter suite at the New York luxury hotel Mandarin Oriental with a view of the Hudson River, as well as invitations to fine restaurants.
In the summer of 2025, the BVK also called in the Munich public prosecutor's office. Since then, investigators have been checking whether there is an initial suspicion of criminal activity. Deutsche Finance has always vehemently rejected all allegations.
Deutsche Finance invests both on behalf of institutional investors and through fund structures for private investors. The investment house chose the sentence as its slogan: “Know how returns are achieved!”
50 pension funds, 50 private banks, 250 foundations, 250 insurance companies, 350 family offices and 375 pension funds are said to have followed the slogan and entrusted the group with a lot of assets. On the website, the group refers to seven billion euros in equity capital placed and assets under management worth more than twelve billion dollars.
Behind Deutsche Finance are the two board members Oliver Thomas Müller (58) and Sven Neubauer (52). Together they control the group holding company Deutsche Finance GmbH: Müller directly and indirectly holds around 35.9 percent of the shares, Neubauer around 27.5 percent.
Insiders say the two complement each other well in their roles: Müller is the man for marketing and sales. Neubauer travels the world and looks after the real estate properties that Deutsche Finance finances.
They advertise their funds to private investors with so-called “club deals”. “These are tailor-made investments, with a high degree of control and involvement in the decision-making processes for investors,” explained Neubauer in an interview.
In July, the Handelsblatt reported that numerous funds for private investors had come under pressure and were only submitting their annual financial statements late. For the majority, only the figures for 2023 were available.
Deutsche Finance also acted in a non-transparent manner in other ways. With existing financial statements, it was not possible to trace for each fund into which properties the investors' millions had actually flowed.
The financial regulator Bafin has now appointed a special representative who, according to Bafin, should check the proper management of closed-end mutual funds. A spokesman for Bafin told Bloomberg on Tuesday that the authority was not involved in the searches in Munich.
At the beginning of August, a fund filed for bankruptcy. On September 2nd, the court appointed Munich lawyer Michael Jaffé as provisional insolvency administrator. A complete economic loss is looming for around 1,200 investors in a real estate complex in Boston.
In mid-October, the Tilp law firm also filed the first claim for damages against the capital management company of the Deutsche Finance Group. The law firm said the lawsuit is based on alleged errors in the prospectus.
