News : Four Bank of Bhutan employees accused.

Following a tip-off, Bank of Bhutan Limited (BoBL) suspended four of its employees at the Punakha branch on “strong” suspicion of embezzlement, fraud, forgery, misuse of authority, negligence and official misconduct, last month.

An investigation was conducted soon after and a few suspicious transactions were detected, which were enquired into by the management, bank officials said.

It was confirmed that two employees had immediately admitted to defrauding and embezzlement of funds. Another two, detected during the investigation, were suspected to having forged the signature and thumb impression of the clients.

“Based on our internal procedures, the bank immediately filed a crime information report (CIR) with the police in Punakha,” the officials said.

The bank was told by the police that all embezzlement cases are taken over by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), based on a meeting between the two agencies. “Accordingly we informed ACC for further actions,” a senior bank official said.

The two suspects were detected during investigation, which lasted from July 23 to August 10.  Upon completion of the investigation by the bank, the report was shared with ACC for further action.

“It’s a case of embezzlement, fraud, forgery and misconduct but has now been rectified,” bank officials said. “The staff had colluded in a fraud, which is very difficult to catch.”

The embezzlement case saw two suspects, who exploited an “inadvertent” weakness in the system (which was recently identified and rectified), and had directly debited a reconciliation account in collusion that should not have permitted direct human input.

The case of forged signature and thumb impression, however, was overlooked by the supervisor, which was the normal control mechanism to be observed strictly by the supervisor.

The suspects had been working for the bank for a period ranging from 5 to 20 years and were suspended with 50 percent basic salary, as per the bank’s service rule and regulations.

The management of the bank added, while the tip-off helped in the quick identification of the suspects, the embezzlement would have come to light within this month as a reconciliation process had already been initiated, following the identification of the inadvertent system weakness.

Bank officials said that it had since adopted more stringent control mechanisms to ensure such cases do not happen again.

Meanwhile, the case is under review jointly by ACC and BoBL.  An immediate action would be initiated against the suspects, after collecting all the documentary evidence, the bank officials said.

While Kuensel tried to contact the suspects, bank employees in Punakha said the suspended employees have changed their cell phone numbers, and some even left the town.

Some of the BoBL employees, who work at the Wangdi branch, are currently posted at Punakha as substitutes.