Eximbank shareholders pursue money loss case in Nghe An

At the 2018 annual general meeting of shareholders of the Vietnam Export Import Bank - Eximbank on the morning of April 27, a number of shareholders asked the bank's Board of Directors to explain the two recent cases of hundreds of billions of dong lost in customers' savings books.

Accordingly, a shareholder said he was disappointed with the management and leadership of the bank because two incidents of losing customers' money had caused the bank's reputation to plummet. The visible damage was the sharp drop in stock prices. So will the General Director resign after this incident?

Another 84-year-old shareholder said she was a founding shareholder of the bank and had been with Eximbank for decades, but now felt sad about the bank's leadership. "Why do we do well but let internal people steal customers' money? I suggest that the leadership must manage better. It is our own people who sabotage us, not outsiders. Therefore, the bank's leadership must review and explain this clearly," she said.

In response to questions, Mr. Le Van Quyet, General Director of Eximbank, said that the incident of 50 billion VND disappearing at Eximbank Do Luong occurred in 2013 and lasted until 2016, and the incident of 245 billion VND lost by Ms. Chu Thi Binh occurred at Eximbank Ho Chi Minh City branch in 2010, not now.

He said that this was a complicated incident that happened many years ago but was discovered in the current period, so he admitted that the responsibility lies with the current management board and must be responsible for resolving it to ensure the interests of customers and protect the bank's image.

Regarding the question of "resigning or not", Mr. Quyet said he returned to Eximbank under a two-year contract and committed that during that time he would fundamentally resolve outstanding issues, bringing Eximbank back to the starting line, and so far that task has been completed.

"I have recently officially expressed my wish to the Board of Directors to look for new personnel who are more suitable for the bank's goals and strategies in the new period," Mr. Quyet answered a shareholder's question.

Regarding this incident, the representative of the Board of Supervisors, Mr. Tran Le Quyet, also accepted responsibility and said that it was impossible to detect the incident because some of the customers' signatures were real. The incident occurred from 2010 to 2016. Through this, the Board of Supervisors also recommended that the Executive Board amend the transaction regulations to be more stringent, such as using fingerprints when making transactions... Mr. Quyet said that he committed to shareholders that similar cases would not happen again.And regarding the case of customer Binh and other customers in Do Luong, the management board also agreed that if it was not the customer's fault, the bank would commit to resolving the matter immediately.

In a previous sharing at the congress, Eximbank leaders said that since the end of February 2017, they discovered that Ms. Chu Thi Binh's deposit balance in the banking system had a discrepancy with the balance shown in the savings books that Ms. Binh was holding.

This bank said that as soon as the incident was discovered, Eximbank sent a request to the police investigation agency (C44) to request verification and clarification.

On June 12, 2017, C44 informed Eximbank that Ms. Chu Thi Binh's signature on the documents related to the withdrawal was real. Then in December 2017, C44 issued a decision to prosecute the case and issued a wanted notice for Mr. Hung.

"Considering that the withdrawal documents have Ms. Binh's real signature, while the case has not yet been concluded by the investigation agency, Eximbank does not have enough legal basis to pay Ms. Binh, so the two sides have not found a common voice," the Eximbank leader affirmed.

The bank also said that while waiting for the court's verdict, the bank is still willing to work with Ms. Binh to reach a reasonable and legal agreement, and has reviewed the capital mobilization work of the entire system. The results showed no signs of abnormality except for the case of Ms. Chu Thi Binh and the case of 50 billion VND evaporated at Eximbank Nghe An.

In addition, the issue of dividends and profits is also of concern to shareholders this morning. According to General Director Le Van Quyet, when starting operations with accumulated losses of thousands of billions of VND, the board of directors must start handling the backlog. Therefore, in the short term, the board of directors will find it difficult to satisfy shareholders in distributing dividends.

In addition, from 2017 to now, the interest rate level is on the decline. The bank's bad debt that needs to be recovered accounts for 2%. With such outstanding bad debt, the profitability is extremely low. The bank is also restructuring its assets to meet the State Bank's requirement of the ratio of short-term capital for medium and long-term loans to 50%. In the past, the bank had to recover 7,000 billion VND, so when lending from this amount, the NIM will certainly be very low. This is the price to pay for the bank to operate sustainably and long-term, so for now, it must accept a low NIM.

Currently, Eximbank's Board of Directors has not discussed the issue of dividends, but if 2018 is completed well, the bank can consider this and ask for the State Bank's opinion to pay dividends to shareholders.