Lawsuit Reveals Deutsche Bank Probe of Ties to Russian Ministers

Deutsche Bank AG called it Project Dastan, a Persian word for the kind of ornate oral histories that are common across Central Asia, including heroictalesof resistance to Russian occupation.

But in this case Dastan is a code name for an internal probe into whether executives at the embattled German lender breached anti-bribery rules by getting too cozy with Russian officials—specifically by hiring their kids to win business.

The bank’s investigation into its own hiring practices was detailed for the first time in a lawsuit last week by a former executive, Nizar Al-Bassam. The revelation of the four-year-old probe, which appears ...