In a joint statement the state police in Hessen and the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office said that “initial investigations show that this was a functional letter bomb.” The letter was addressed personally to Mr. Ackermann.
Though a native Swiss, Mr. Ackermann is the most prominent banker in Germany, his name synonymous with an industry whose reputation has plummeted since the financial crisis.
A spokesman for the state police, Siegfried Wilhelm, said that a letter had been found in which responsibility was claimed by an Italian group called the Informal Anarchist Federation, which has a history of sending letter bombs. Unofficial suspicion had earlier fallen on the Frankfurt offshoot of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which condemned the attempted letter-bombing.
Threats on the lives of Deutsche Bank executives are not taken lightly here after the 1989 killing of Alfred Herrhausen, the bank’s chief at the time, in a bomb attack. Suspicions fell on the Red Army Faction terrorist group.
According to the statement by the police and prosecutors, employees in the Deutsche Bank mailroom discovered the envelope on Wednesday and, suspicious of its contents, had it X-rayed before contacting the police around midday. Klaus Thoma, a spokesman for the bank, said that employees had alerted the police to a suspicious package but that he would not comment further.
The Frankfurt police and specialists from the state police defused the letter bomb. Details on the construction of the bomb were not available for “investigative tactical reasons,” the statement said. Late last year, a package bomb addressed to Chancellor Angela Merkel was intercepted in her office’s mailroom in the midst of a wave of letter bombs in Greece aimed at foreign embassies that was eventually traced to Greek anarchists.
Mr. Ackermann is also chairman of the Institute of International Finance, an industry group that has lobbied against regulations that would require higher capital requirements to help prevent future crises. He was also involved in negotiations over write-downs of Greek debt, sometimes called haircuts, for private bond owners. Mrs. Merkel came under scrutiny in 2009 for hosting a dinner party the year before with Mr. Ackermann as a guest. The German news media described the event as a birthday party in Mr. Ackermann’s honor, raising questions about the cozy ties between finance and government.
Prosecutors also recently searched the executive offices of Deutsche Bank on suspicion that Mr. Ackermann and other executives gave false testimony in a long-running civil suit related to the 2002 bankruptcy of a German media company. Deutsche Bank has denied any wrongdoing. Mr. Ackermann has announced that he will step down from his post in 2012.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/world/europe/letter-bomb-sent-to-german-bank-chief.html?partner=rss&emc=rss