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Vietnamese bank seeks police help as $400,000 deposit goes AWOL

By Nguyen Hoai March 28, 2017 | 10:18 am GMT+7

The banker responsible for the transaction quit last September and is reportedly out of contact.

A Hanoi-based small commercial bank said it has asked police to investigate the loss of a VND9 billion (nearly $400,000) deposit of a customer, after it failed to contact a former banker who signed the deal.

The case was reported to the police as one of the National Citizen Bank's customers, Nguyen Bach Mai, filed a complaint recently saying she tried to retrieve her deposit at the bank but was told it had been withdrawn, the bank said in a statement issued late Monday.

“We have informed the State Bank of Vietnam and forwarded the case to the police for further investigation,” it said.

The bank said it has been trying to contact Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, a former branch manager who was in charge of the deposit but who had quit in September last year.

Mai told VnExpress that she deposited the money as savings at Ha’s branch between 2012 and January 2016.

Then Ha advised her to switch to a different form of deposit for VIP customers to enjoy the high deposit rate of 13 percent a year. Mai said that in mid-2016, she needed money for house renovation and contacted Ha, but Ha gave various excuses to delay the withdrawal.

Mai went to the bank after she lost contact with Ha, only to find out that all the money was gone.

The bank said that it has no policies for such VIP deposit, and that Ha set up the whole scheme herself. It has sent her three summon notices since receiving the complaint, but she said she was either sick or on a business trip and did not show up.