Page 181 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

request them not to collect the amount of this cheque for us and if they
had already collected by the time they receive our request, they should
return the amount to the paying bank and get back the original cheque.

We immediately contacted the local representative of our foreign
correspondent bank to help us. He was surprised why we should send
the cheque for collection and then retrace it. We explained to him about
our suspicion of the customer not being true owner of the cheque or
rightful transferee of the cheque. He could not immediately get in touch
with their New York office due to time difference and requested us also
to contact the bank directly as a double effort and to fully explain the
reasons to them for recalling the cheque.

I used to call the New York Office of the Correspondent Bank at 10 pm
in Hong Kong when they opened at 9 am in New York. For two days, I
tried in vain and only succeeded on third day. They confirmed that
message of their representative office had been received but they had
already presented the cheque and received money. Now they were trying
to return the funds to the paying banker to retrieve the cheque from
them. Finally, after 5 more days, we got a visit of the representative office
in charge to our branch when he delivered the original cheque to us and
both of us heaved a sigh of relief.

We had simultaneously paid our attention to other small value cheques
also. We had frozen the account already for the amount received in the
customer's account. Now we were not sure about the amount of how
many cheques will be claimed back by the paying banks on complaints
by the true owners not getting payment of their cheques. We decided
to write to each of the paying banks, a standard letter, requesting them
to return the cheque paid by them and claim the amount of the cheque
from us as we were not sure about our client on whose behalf we
collected the amount was the true owner or rightful transferee of the
cheque.

178 | A Banker down the Rabbit Hole