The Investigation Agency proposed to prosecute the defendant Nguyen Van Linh (born in 1986, a bank treasury officer) for the crime of embezzlement of assets. According to the investigation conclusion, the TPBank Head Office (HUB HO) centralized treasury stores assets including gold, cash, valuable papers, important seals, collateral assets, etc. Regarding gold, the treasury is divided into 3 states for management.

Accordingly, TPBank accepts to keep SJC and DOJI gold for a fee, including keeping the original series (when returning, the gold will be received in its original condition) and not in series (when returning, the full amount of gold kept will be received).

Regarding gold trading, SJC gold is stored by TPBank and used for buying and selling transactions with customers. Pledged gold (as collateral): TPBank lends money to customers and uses SJC gold bars as collateral. After receiving the pledge, the gold is sealed according to TPBank's regulations and stored in the vault.

In particular, gold for trading and gold kept in custody is inventoried daily and periodically by the Warehouse Management Board on June 30 and December 31 every year.

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Illustration: Chi Hung

Around 2017, Nguyen Van Linh was the treasurer, a member of the Treasury Management Board at the TPBank Headquarters Transaction Center. Linh noticed that the gold pledged in the vault fluctuated little, customers who pledged gold had a clear settlement and maturity schedule recorded in the management book, the checking and counting of this type of asset only took place twice a year and was announced in advance.

Therefore, Linh came up with the idea of ​​appropriating gold in the vault (stored in the safe for buying and selling gold, keeping it for others) and then taking gold from the safe to mortgage to replace the shortage to bypass the daily inventory.

Sophisticated gold appropriation

From the accounting information, Linh determined that a customer named C. mortgaged 246 taels of SJC gold but only paid on paper and kept the gold in a fixed warehouse. Linh planned to appropriate the above amount of gold in the safe for buying and selling gold and replace it with the amount of gold that Mr. C. mortgaged.

On July 5, 2017, after completing the end-of-day gold inventory, taking advantage of the negligence of other members of the Warehouse Management Board, Linh took 246 taels of SJC gold from the safe containing "gold for sale and safekeeping" and put them in a plastic bag and put them in a metal box.

On the morning of July 6, 2017, during the process of opening the warehouse to receive funds for the branches, Linh brought a metal box containing 246 taels of SJC gold to the buffer warehouse (a space outside the vault, entry and exit to the buffer warehouse is not managed and monitored).

In the late morning, taking advantage of the time when the treasury staff went to the ATM to collect funds, Linh entered the buffer zone and took 246 taels of SJC gold, selling them for more than 8.8 billion VND. The defendant deposited all of the above money into a securities account.

At the end of the working day on July 6, 2017, during the inventory process with the Warehouse Management Board, Linh placed Mr. C.'s bag of gold containing 246 taels into the "buying and keeping" gold safe to replace the gold book that Linh had taken. Therefore, for a long time, other members of the Warehouse Management Board did not detect the missing assets.

By March 22, 2019, Mr. C. had fully paid off the loan and received the full 246 taels of gold from TPBank. To continue to avoid detection of the shortage of the appropriated gold, Linh cut the seal of the DOJI Company gold bag in the vault, took out 246 taels of SJC gold, and then put it in the bank's safe containing gold for sale.

By January 15, 2021, at the vault under Linh's responsibility to manage, an additional 561 taels of SJC gold were found, which were collateral for Ms. H's bank loan.

Realizing that using Ms. H.'s mortgaged gold to replace the 246 taels of SJC gold that she had appropriated was safer, Linh took the metal box containing Ms. H.'s mortgaged gold out of the vault to break the lock, withdrew 246 taels of SJC gold, packaged, sealed it, and put it in the "buy, sell, and keep" gold safe. Linh put the remaining gold in a metal box in the "keep for safekeeping" vault.

On August 9, 2023, Linh returned 561 taels of gold to Ms. H. in the vault. After Ms. H. paid off the debt, there was no other suitable amount of gold in the vault to compensate for the 246 taels of gold that had been appropriated. Linh was unable to return it, so he turned himself in.