[Vnbiz] ABN Amro pays Vietnamese bank $4,55m in row over trades

[Phan, Tai]

27 November 2006
ABN Amro pays Vietnamese bank $4,55m in row over trades  

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HANOI - Dutch bank ABN Amro has paid $4,55m to a Vietnamese state bank in a dispute over foreign trades that has seen four of the bank's employees detained, a police official said at the weekend. 

Two of the bank's Vietnamese employees remain jailed without charge and a third is under house arrest in the case, which involved embezzlement by an employee of Incombank, a state-run Vietnamese institution.

Police said a Vietnamese-American ABN Amro manager - who was under house arrest but was allowed to leave the country because of pregnancy complications - must return to face unspecified charges.

The high-profile case has caused a stir in the foreign business community, with a recent Wall Street Journal editorial accusing Vietnamese police of taking "hostages" to force payment in a commercial dispute.


Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung recently said the ABN Amro employees were responsible for the Incombank losses and that paying back the money might result in leniency on any criminal charges for its employees.

An official with the Hanoi economic police said on Saturday that ABN Amro had paid $3,8m plus 12-billion dong ($750000) to Incombank accounts.

However, the police officer said the ABN Amro employees would not be released immediately because of the payments and they still would face future criminal charges.

"The bank just repaid what it had appropriated," the officer said. "The payment is not aimed at bailing people out of jail." 

No court date has been set for the ABN Amro employees, and police have not specified exactly what the charges will be. Vietnamese law allows police to hold suspects for up to 16 months before formally charging them.

An ABN Amro spokeswoman would not comment on the payments but did not deny they had been made. 


Since February, Incombank has been demanding that ABN Amro repay money that the Vietnamese bank lost through currency trades by one of its own employees, Nguyen Thi Quynh Van, who is also jailed and may face the death penalty for economic losses to the state.

According to Incombank, Van was not authorised to make the foreign exchange trades, and therefore ABN Amro was responsible for the money that Van lost.

Incombank accuses the ABN Amro employees of colluding with Van to make the foreign exchange trades - on which she lost at least $5,4m 

ABN Amro says its employees had no way of knowing there was anything amiss when they conducted the trades. DPA