so happy kenny got safely back to singapore! he had so much stories to tell about his short stint in shanghai! for those of you who are unaware, kenny got 'loaned' to the Bank of Japan's Shanghai office for a good two months as their Taxation Director was not available for duty. Heard she was suspended due to a corruption case.. Okay, i shouldn't have divulged that. But mistakes do happen and it unfortunately happened to her. Ironically, i'm facing a situation similar to hers!

As you all have known, i am working for a local bank here in Singapore (hint for you my lovely people, the bank has the word "OVERSEAS" in it!) Anyway anyway, our department is being suspended for an indefinite period of time due to a fraud case (i'll explain it more later!) So for now, its like a paid holiday for me, slacking in office while doing something really silly. like a Credit Limit Increment calling campaign.

Oh the fraud case you ask? here's some juicy goss for you people! anyway in early november, a fraud case was detected. i don't know how they discovered it but the fraud case just surfaced.. after much investigating by the utterly incompetent compliance department, they found out that it was not just a few accounts that were fraudulently manipulated, but 500! they got a whopper of a shock and decide to terminate the agent immediately. i don't know if he was charged in court.

IN COURT YOU ASK?!?! yeaps.. there's a law for Banking Secrecy, whereby the officer is not allowed to use the details of a customer for his own interest without the explicit consent of the customer himself. This is also a conflict of interest for the institution (the bank) and the customer. a breach of this act may result in being fined S$125,000.00 for the officer and/or a jail term of three years. the officer is henceforth barred from working in any bank, insurance company, hedgefund company, mutual funds houses REITs trading and the Exchange. As for the institution, it may be fined for up to maximum of S$5,000,000.00 and its banking license suspended for a period of up to a year.

back to the story, so yeah. the department was closed since early november due to the fraud case. investigations and such took them like three to four months. so november went by like a boat sailing in the Mississippi, slowly but surely. then came december! and we thought we could resume selling but alas! our joy was shortlived! along came this bully of a regulatory board called the Monetary Authority of Singapore. it stated that all insurance agents and brokers MUST be registered with them, failing which will be practicing without a license and thus a fine is inevitable.

so again the selling was halted so that Human Resource is able to do the necessary paper work to facilitate with the registration. and today its the 13th of January 2011 and i am still not hearing any news from HR. how sad can life be huh?