by J.S. Nelson
The recent news that German authorities raided DWS and Deutsche Bank offices for evidence in support of greenwashing allegations demonstrates that potential corporate liability for misrepresenting ESG initiatives should be very much on our minds. The action of the German authorities a follow-on investigation of a case that started in the U.S. with a whistleblower, DWS’s former global head of sustainability who alleged that the Company had made misleading statements in its 2020 annual report that more than half the group’s US $900 billion in assets had been invested using ESG criteria.