ABN AMRO pays Vietnam bank in currency case -paper
HANOI - Dutch bank ABN AMRO has paid $4.5 million to a state-run Vietnamese bank as part of a settlement in a foreign exchange trading dispute, state-run newspapers reported on Saturday.
Four Vietnamese ABN AMRO employees and an employee of Vietnam's Incombank are in custody in the nine-month-long case that prompted complaints from European and U.S. business groups and strained the Communist-run country's diplomatic ties with the Netherlands.
Thanh Nien (Young People) newspaper said the amount paid on Friday to a police custody account at State Treasury was for "illegal profits" earned by the Dutch bank, but ABN AMRO maintains that the trades were legal and valid.
"We have stated in the past that we don't wish to profit from illegal actions of others," an ABN AMRO spokeswoman said on Saturday, but she declined further comment.
Other people familiar with the case declined comment on the case as police were still investigating.
The newspaper report quoted police as saying the bank executed 504 transactions through an unregistered trader of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of Vietnam (Incombank) branch in the northeastern city of Haiphong.
Police and State Bank Governor Le Duc Thuy have said the Dutch bank's Hanoi branch broke regulations in foreign exchange trading with Incombank's Haiphong branch. Thuy said ABN AMRO "has had certain wrongdoings in adhering to Vietnamese regulations". Police said the trader was not registered with the State Bank of Vietnam as a currency trader. The employee has been arrested on charges of causing losses to the treasury through fraud.
Incombank, Vietnam's fourth-largest bank by assets, filed a lawsuit in early August seeking $5.4 million from ABN AMRO for foreign exchange losses. It said deals by ABN AMRO traders were speculative and made with an unauthorised Incombank trader.
Police and government officials have rejected accusation of unfair criminalisation levelled by foreign business groups.
Reuters - November 25, 2006.
|