WEBSTER defines “bank” (noun) as “an establishment for the custody, loan, exchange, or issue of money, for the extension of credit, and for facilitating the transmission of funds.” It’s the institution where most people, particularly entrepreneurs, deposit their money for safekeeping and at the same time earn interest.
The common denominator why people put their money in the bank is trust and confidence in the banking establishment and particularly on their managers and personnel. The other factor is the confidentiality of their account. This is the reason we have the Bank Secrecy Law.
The prohibition is rigid against the bank and its personnel to divulge the information on the account of a depositor to third parties unless ordered by the court in a case involving the bank account. With more reasons that the bank managers or employees cannot “use” or even “touch” the depositor’s money.
There were issues involving some banks that somehow erode the trust and confidence of the public, particularly those who have accounts in the bank. In the selection and hiring of bank employees, the bank management is presumed to have hired employees that possess utmost integrity and honesty.
A bank scam victim, who is a close friend, confided to me yesterday about his plans and that of the other scam victims of this thrift bank, which has several branches in Cebu City, to sue the branch manager and the ranking officials of the bank, who I won’t name them yet until the case is filed before the city prosecutor’s office or in court.
The manager of this thrift bank is the con, said my friend. A total of more or less P20 million was ripped off from the bank’s several depositors, who are mostly friends of the manager and who is nowhere to be found now. What got the goat of my friend is that the bank management terminated the manager without informing him and the others who have complaints against this manager.
Lesson number one is that even if the manager or employee of the bank is your closest friend, never give your full trust on them.
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The ambush-killing of Clarin Mayor David Navarro in broad daylight on Friday has again tarnished the image of our Philippine National Police (PNP). And the order of President Rodrigo Duterte for the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to conduct the investigation instead of the task force that the city police office created is a double whammy on them.
Whatever crimes that the slain mayor may have committed, he was still entitled to the presumption of innocence until otherwise proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt of the crime charged in a proceeding before a court of law. President Duterte only put things in the right perspective when he directed the NBI to investigate the ambush-slaying of Mayor Navarro to avoid suspicion of a whitewash, especially after the wife of the slain mayor posted on Facebook their exchanges of telling text messages before the ambush.
With the NBI now conducting the investigation on the ambush-slay of Navarro, whatever is the result could perhaps be acceptable to the public, particularly the relatives of the victim since the NBI is non-partisan.