An audit commissioned by German regulators found that Deutsche Bank AG employees might have manipulated indexes as part of a purported scheme to help Italy's Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA hide losses, Bloomberg News reported Dec. 8.

The review found that an internal probe carried out by Deutsche Bank depicted "abnormalities" in the values of proprietary indexes used to set the price for a 2008 derivatives deal between the two banks and that Deutsche Bank failed to provide guidelines for monitoring the indexes for possible manipulation, Bloomberg said.

A Milan court Oct. 1 charged the German lender and six of its current and former managers for colluding with Monte dei Paschi to falsify the troubled Italian bank's accounts, Bloomberg added, noting that the trial is due to start Dec. 15.

Regulators in June 2014 investigated Deutsche Bank regarding the Santorini deal with Monte dei Paschi to determine, among other things, whether the German lender's management failed to properly supervise individuals involved in the transaction.

Meanwhile, documents provided by Deutsche Bank to a federal court in Manhattan, N.Y., as part of its settlement of gold- and silver-price-rigging claims, provided "smoking gun" evidence that UBS Group AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Bank of Nova Scotia and other firms manipulated the silver market, according to a Dec. 7 Bloomberg report.

Investors that bought or sold futures contracts filed the lawsuit against the banks before the Manhattan court in 2014, the news agency said. The plaintiffs now seek to file a new complaint to add units of Barclays Plc, BNP Paribas Fortis SA, Standard Chartered Plc and Bank of America Corp. as defendants, it added.