Page 993 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 31 March 1993
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this do to allow the person being screwed by the bank - and I think it is a good way to put it - to gain justice? All the rightness in the world will not help someone in that situation. In Canberra recently repossession agents attempting to take someone's car away used a document which contained forged signatures. When their bluff was called, they simply ran away, never to be heard from again. One wonders how many other people lost their vehicle or other property in similar circumstances.
I think it is obvious that banks today operate differently from the way they used to. One local bank manager said to an unhappy client, "I do not know why you worry about interest rates. We make our money out of foreclosures". What a lamentable state of affairs this is! Fortunately, the jeweller concerned was able to take his business elsewhere by refinancing when the bank asked him for even more security when they already had more than enough. At least his relatives did not end up losing their homes as well, as many others have.
I know of a case in Sydney where someone involved with the Commonwealth Bank borrowed from Elders and ended up paying for overseas foreign exchange debts that had never been incurred. The money had never been sent offshore. That case was submitted to the fraud squad. It was a clear case of fraud - I have seen the documents - but, unfortunately, nothing was done. The person, who was businesswoman of the year a few years ago, was bankrupted. Her mother lost her home. The woman herself lost literally millions of dollars because of bank fraud. In that case a Commonwealth Bank manager forged her signature on a business account, placed in that account securities that had been left with the Commonwealth Bank for safekeeping only, and used that situation in the bank's activities to try to reclaim loans from the person.
In another case in Canberra a church required six parishioners to put up their homes as security. Many strange things happened after that. There was a valuation for $1.55m and that was said not to be adequate for the amount of money sought by the church. The bank manager referred them to another valuer, who gave them the required much higher valuation. In other words, the bank manager knew where to send someone to get the right valuation, regardless of whether that was the correct valuation. Six hundred thousand dollars was then secured by the mortgages of the parishioners, who were not notified about various matters that the bank in that case was required by law to notify them of.
Former Democrat senator Paul McLean is someone who stood up very strongly for the people in their fight against banks. He wrote a book called Bankers and Bastards, and in the preface he said:
This is a book about the human face of banking; about its social power and its abuse and neglect. Its criticisms are not directed at the many thousands of ordinary Australians who work in banks and give their best for us, and usually with a smile.
That is a point that I endorse totally. He continued:
It is directed at the concepts, processes, policies and practices which are modern banking as we experience it. It targets especially the few ruthless bankers who deliberately abuse the special powers that they hold in trust for the community.
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