Washington, Aug 4 (EFE).– The U.S. Justice Department has opened a criminal probe into Deutsche Bank AG, suspected of operations that involved money-laundering trades worth billions of dollars for Russian clients, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.

By means of the so-called “mirror trades,” clients have been able to move enormous sums from Moscow to London and from rubles to dollars without informing Russian regulatory authorities as required.

These transactions could top $6 billion, and would have occurred between 2011-2015, according to the Web site, which cites sources close to the investigation.

On July 30, the German bank acknowledged in its annual report that it had initiated an internal investigation with regard to a “significant volume” of suspicious transactions in Russia and Britain, and that it had taken disciplinary action against several individuals, without offering further details.

This is not the first time Deutsche Bank has had to deal with investigations by U.S. authorities, which recently probed its role in rigging the benchmark LIBOR interest rates and for its operations in trading high-risk “mortgage- and asset-backed securities.” EFE