The Bank of Japan has disciplined five employees at the Maebashi branch office for swapping 11 old banknotes for 11 newly designed banknotes with sought-after serial numbers, such as "E888888M.
The new 1,000 yen, 5,000 yen and 10,000 yen bills went into circulation on Nov. 1. It was the first time the bills had been redesigned in 20 years.
The five bank clerks--a man and four women in their 20s to 30s--work in the bill issuing section and swapped the banknotes when their supervisor was absent.
The switch was noticed by an outsider who changed old banknotes for new ones at the branch office on Nov. 12 and notified the office, which initiated an internal investigation.
The five bank clerks told the investigation they took the new bills because they wanted souvenirs of the new issuance to show off to their families.
Two were suspended from work for a week, two had their salaries reduced and the fifth was given a warning.
In addition, four managers were reprimanded for not supervising the five clerks properly. Kazuo Fukuda, the manager of the branch office, and the deputy manager had their salaries cut by 10 percent for three months and two months, respectively.
According to the investigation, the clerks entered an area in the branch office into which it is forbidden to bring bills on several occasions from Nov. 5 to 15 and swapped five 10,000 yen, two 5,000 yen and four 1,000 yen notes.
Two of the five clerks kept the bills at their houses.
All 11 banknotes were retrieved
The clerks' misdeeds violated the code of conduct for Bank of Japan employees that urges them to make it a principle to act fairly.
Eizo Kobayashi, executive director of the central bank, said at a press conference Wednesday: "They fell into easy temptation and conducted an inappropriate act. As they replaced the new banknotes with others, we haven't suffer any economic damage."
Therefore, the central bank intends not to report the case to police.
Bank of Japan Gov. Toshihiko Fukui, in a written statement issued the same day, said that he deeply regretted the case and would like to apologize to the public.
The central bank has begun an investigation to see if similar cases of note-swapping have occurred at the banknote issuing bureau and over branch offices. It intends to reexamine the current operating system to prevent such a recurrence.
Stupid, aren't they? And Y didn't the Bank of Japan report this to the police? Can someone explain this picture to me?
2 comments:
Probably because there was no actual crime committed, valid bank notes were replaced with valid bank notes.
haha! that's true! but I bet you that there is some funky banking law that says that all transactions - whether it's changing valid notes for valid notes has to be followed by a HUGE paper trail - all requiring separate signatures - just to keep our unemployment rates low.
hang on, what about sarbanes-oxley? who owns the Bank of Japan????
hmm... need to do some research...
Post a Comment