Page 191 - A Banker Down the Rabbit Hole

or a fraudulent transaction. I gave my officer, one week's time to identify
the reasons for non-reconciliation. I was anxious to know about transaction
of bigger amount of USD 120,000 and asked him to trace details for this
entry first. The officer brought details of USD 120,000 and found that it
was an error of double payment to our customer on account of receipt of
remittance for maturity amount of Foreign Currency Non-Resident account
opened with Bombay branch in India.

We immediately contacted the customer who was top most borrower
of the branch in terms of value and variety of credit facilities of Hong
Kong Dollar 100 million. Their Chief Financial Officer (CFO) came to meet
us and he disclosed that they were holding this amount as a fixed deposit
on automatic quarterly renewable basis because they also could not
identify why this amount was credited again to their account. We
questioned the integrity of the C F O as to why he had kept quiet and
not sought clarification from us for such a large amount for such a long
time of over a year. He pleaded innocence and claimed that the company
is holding funds with our branch and have not used these funds as they
had no intentions to cheat the bank. We recovered the entire interest
paid on the amount kept as fixed deposit with us along with principal
amount of USD 120,000 lying with us. But it was a shock to us to know
that they kept the amount without returning to us for so long. Our trust
in this top most borrower was really shaken. But we had to keep quiet
as one of our Managers had made the mistake in the first instance and
then the bank took more than one year in detecting this mistake.

The related Junior Manager who had signed the transaction and the
Expatriate Manager colleague who had approved this transaction of
second time payment heaved a sigh of relief on full recovery of this large
amount by Indian standards i.e. about Rs. 48 lakh at the then prevailing
exchange rate. The colleague was thankful to my efforts to speed up
reconciliation of accounts that led to the detection of error and recovery
of full amount that saved loss to the bank and thereby protected his
career.

188 | A Banker down the Rabbit Hole