Embezzlement in banking sector gets alarming Banking has been named as the leading sector in terms of embezzlement with 9 out of the 10 embezzlement cases treated in 2013.   More criminals, bigger worries Nguoi lao dong newspaper last week received the letters from three persons who are the depositors of a commercial bank in Hanoi, complaining that they cannot not withdraw their money from the bank. The bank refused to pay the three depositors VND9.3 billion, saying that the saving books they showed were forged. The depositors affirmed that the saving books were the ones they received from the bank’s workers. A part of the deposits was remitted through bank accounts, while the remaining was given to the bank’s credit officers who came to see them at home to collect money and gave saving books. The case is being investigated by the Hanoi Police. A report by the Ministry of Public Security showed that the number of crimes in the banking sector only accounts for 0.02 percent of the total cases, but the damage value accounts for 60.2 percent. Since 2009, the police have investigated more than 100 cases, in which criminals committed frauds, illegally appropriated properties, embezzled and violated the credit regulations, causing the loss of VND9 trillion and 3,000 taels of gold. The police have warned that the number of crimes in the banking sector is on the rise. The majority of criminals were non-bank officers, but in many cases, bank officers were found as the instigators. A report showed that the police have prosecuted 117 offenders recently relating in 30 fraud cases. Of these, 81 were bank officers. The consequence of the hot growth Commenting about the rise in the number of criminals, Lawyer Truong Thanh Duc, Chair of the Banking Legal Club under the Vietnam Banking Association, believes that this is the follow-up of the hot development period. As the hot development period has finished, the socio-economic difficult and conditions plus the legal loopholes both have made the number of crimes increase. One of the solutions suggested to settle the current problem is that banks should install security devices (camera, magnetic cards, chip cards) and use professional security services. Technology experts said there are the cameras which allow to see clearly the faces of the people making transactions with ATMs, and recognize the face value of the banknotes. However, a lot of banks refuse to use the latest technologies because of the high costs. The management boards of some commercial banks even plan to cut down the number of security workers to cut down the operation expenses. Duc has also noted that nowadays, banks tend to ignore some steps of the operation procedures, because they believe the modern technologies allow to give exact figures. However, there is another important reason that the bank networks have become too large which makes it difficult to supervise everything. A banker has pointed out that in the hot development period, when bank branches mushroom, banks had to recruit officers in large quantities to work in their large networks. As a result, the unqualified workers were also recruited. A person with good marketing skill could be appointed to the post of branch director after 2-3 years at work. Meanwhile, in normal conditions, it takes tens of years to gain the position. Thanh Mai, VietNamNet Bridge