As far as badges of honor go, I think being so much of a thorn in a bank’s side that they’ll watch your every move and even try to ply you with hookers in order to discredit you is meritorious of one, for sure. And that’s what Deutsche Bank apparently did to Gerald Herrmann and Michael Bohndorf:

An investigation commissioned by Deutsche Bank has revealed that Germany’s largest bank spied on several of its management board members, supervisory board members and on at least one shareholder. The 150-page report was prepared by legal firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

Leading executives at the bank hired external “specialists” to solve their security problems — some of them real, some of them imagined — and those specialists in some cases resorted to dubious methods.

Gerald Herrmann, an official from the Ver.di services union who had a seat on Deutsche Bank’s supervisory board at the time, was suspected in 2001 of having leaked the bank’s third-quarter results to the Reuters news agency. The Corporate Security department reacted by hiring external detectives to monitor him.

At first the bank had only admitted comparing travel data such as hotel stays to establish a link between Herrmann and a Reuters reporter. But it’s now clear that the snooping operations went much further in some cases.

Herrmann and his attorney Bohndorf were suspected of giving the q3 2001 results to Munich media magnate (say that three times fast – it’s fun) Leo Kirch. Bohndorf’s always been a little pesty to Deutsche management, having the gall to ask questions in shareholders meetings and whatnot, when he’s not partying in Ibiza. So they would’ve relished the opportunity to take him down, and try they did:

The investigators compiled detailed reports on his movements and even looked into whether he had any personal weaknesses: alcohol, gambling, women? One insider reports that the agency resorted to hiring women to test him.

We at LOLFed like most of these things, but we also have no shame. Thus, efforts to discredit us would be worthless, but please don’t let that dissuade you from attempting to distract us from our mission with copious quantities of vodka and The Hangover-style Vegas junkets. In all seriousness, though, this kind of activity probably violated numerous laws, was likely ordered by the Chairman or CEO, and that makes this almost as horrifying as Tinsley and Topper filing for divorce. Next time you want to know who leaked some info, think ahead of time to pull the old “every copy has a different word misspelled” trick or something, and leave the espionage to other folks.