Morgan Stanley was accused of deceiving the ECB by creating a fictitious position – Kommersant

US bank Morgan Stanley has created a fictitious position in its Frankfurt office to comply with ECB guidelines, it said Financial Times citing unnamed sources. After Brexit, European authorities recommended that international banks manage their European operations not from London, as was the case while the UK was in the EU, but from countries that continue to be in the EU.

As an unnamed banker recently told a Frankfurt court, in April 2021 he received the position of director of “trading operations in credit instruments” in the bank’s Frankfurt office with an annual salary of €375 thousand. However, senior managers confidentially informed him that this position mainly exists on paper, and were advised to “not actively mention your position” in public space.

The name of the bank was not revealed at the court hearing, but the FT reports that it is Morgan Stanley. The bank itself disputed the banker’s testimony during the hearing and will appeal the court’s decision, which ruled that the banker’s position and his actual responsibilities did not correspond to each other. No measures against the bank have been reported. Officially, neither Morgan Stanley nor the ECB comment on the situation.

Evgeny Khvostik