How do foreign banks get into the very lucrative Chinese banking market? Simple — in the case of Deutsch Bank — they provide enormous bribes to Chinese officials to ease their way past the innumeral ribbons of red tape and xenophobic restrictions normally placed on any foreign corporation wishing to do business in China.

A recent media report details how the directors of Deutsche Bank decided nearly twenty years ago, when they had virtually no presence in mainland China and only a tenuous foothold in both Taiwan and Hongkong, that they would do literally anything to gain a toehold in China — where bank customers were known to steadily pile up savings year after year, and never make a withdrawal.

And so it began. First of all the Bank sent officers to negotiate with Communist Party officials in Beijing, where they were wined and dined to an extent that would make a congressional lobbyist blush. In one case, a Party official was given a bottle of 70 year old French champaign — market value pegged at just under five thousand dollars — for an introduction to Xin Jinping. Once the bank was officially chartered it began hiring relatives of Communit Party bosses, until today Deutsche Bank is rated one of the top banking institutions in Asia. Which just goes to show it pays to grease the right palms.