English
• Update 15:00 Two more people have filed complaints
The number of complaints filed concerning the disappearance of money and valuables from the safe deposit boxes in the BCR branch of Piteşti has increased to ten after two more people filed complaints today, according to sources in the press.
Judicial sources said that the total loss in the ten cases exceeds 1.5 million Euros.
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Tomas Spurny, the executive chairman of BCR, recently wrote in an editorial "let's talks about what we can improve together".
It is a nice intention. But... we don't really see how we could improve together the security of safe deposit boxes of BCR, considering that over the last days over eight thefts have been reported from the central headquarters of BCR in Piteşti.
What is it that we should be doing?
Guard them ourselves?
At this moment, safe deposit boxes are looking like the least safe method for keeping extremely valuable goods. Even the most cursory research on this subject reveals that these boxes are not deposits, which means that they are not protected by the bank deposit guarantee funds, nor are the banks allowed to grant loans based on them, and they are not "safe". The most telling confirmation of that fact comes from the incidents which have recently occurred at BCR Piteşti.
By the time the newspaper went to print, eight complaints alleging thefts had been submitted to the central headquarters of BCR in Piteşti amounted to eight. Dinu Dănuţ, chief-commissioner of the County Police Inspectorate (IJP) of Argeş, told us that the authorities are convinced that the number of victims is even greater, and the total amount of the alleged losses exceeds one million Euros. He told us: "At the moment there are eight complaints. We hope there won't be any more of the bank's customers that file complaints, but as far as we are concerned, we think that there may be more. There are people who are currently outside Romania. Many have just now gotten around to checking their safe deposit boxes, so there is a chance of more occurrences of missing goods. At the moment, the damages incurred exceed 100,000 Euros per customer. Everyone who walked into the bank is a suspect, including the employees".
The internet is rife with forums and examples of people from all over the world, who had their goods stolen from safe deposit boxes. No bank anywhere in the world seems to ensure the protection of these safe boxes, at least according to our research. The customers are essentially tenants, and the banks are just landlords. The responsibility for the valuables placed inside the boxes rests solely with the "tenant" - the bank's customer, and as long they do not insure those goods with an insurance company, stealing from safe deposit boxes looks like the perfect crime.
These cases, for which complaints have been filed recently in Piteşti, are not within the responsibility of the Central Bank. But according to Nicolae Cinteză, the head of the Oversight Division of the National Bank of Romania (NBR), lenders have specialized systems for protecting their customers. "There is no such thing as a perfect theft", he told us: "Monitoring systems exist. Who told you they don't? In my opinion what happened in that case is that a protocol violation has occurred. Nobody knows what those safe deposit boxes contained. I have doubts when it comes to the involvement of a bank's employee; they would have to be insane to commit this kind of theft. We need to allow the Prosecutors' office to do its job. This is an issue that concerns the authorities and not the Oversight Division of the NBR". According to him, a form of communication between the clients and the bank does exist, because if the opposite were true, no one would store their goods in the banks' safe deposit boxes.
So far, there is no evidence to prove the involvement of the employees of BCR in the incidents which were the object of complaints, the representatives of the lender told us. They told us: "The safety of services provided by BCR to its clients comes first, and the tolerance towards this kind of incidents is zero. We are still waiting for the investigation to be completed. So far there is no evidence of the involvement of employees of the bank in the incidents which were the object of the complaints filed. The bank does not have the legal obligation to cover the losses of its customers, but we do feel that we have the obligation to evaluate any factors and internal procedures which could have influenced the occurrence of the incident. We will treat in a responsible and balanced manner any moral obligation to compensate the customers, with the help of the competent institutions. Following the incident, we are conducting a complete review of the security standards and of the procedures for all the locations where we provide the safe deposit box service".
The first complaint of the eight was filed last Friday, by Eugen Florea, a businessman from Piteşti, who alleged that money and jewelry worth approximately 500,000 lei disappeared from his safe deposit box. Yesterday and on Monday, seven similar complaints were filed, according to the announcement made by the Police.
The representatives of BCR told us that the lender is not responsible for these incidents, but that it will cooperate with the authorities for the truth to be uncovered. They gave us the following statement on Monday: "The Romanian Commercial Bank provides a service to rent safe deposit boxes without asking customers to state their contents; the customers are the only ones to know the contents of the boxes and the value of the goods in question. The configuration of the security system makes unauthorized and unrecorded access to the vault room of the safe deposit boxes. As per the operating procedure, the safe deposit boxes can only be opened with the unique access keys which are in the customers' possession, after first using another unique key which is in possession of the bank. According to the same procedure, clients are not accompanied by the staff of the bank at the moment they open the safe deposit boxes, so that the employees of the bank have no way of seeing the contents of the clients' safe deposit boxes. BCR is collaborating with the Police and it has made available to the investigators all the material evidence and the electronic recordings in order to help uncovering the truth. The safety of services provided by BCR to its clients comes first, and the tolerance towards this kind of incidents is zero. We are still waiting for the completion of the investigation, without ruling out at this time any theory concerning the veracity of the complaints filed".
Two similar incidents occurred at a Raiffeisen Bank agency in Ploieşti, about three months ago, and another one year ago, at a Romanian International Bank agency (RIB) in Bucharest.
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