The road to Hell…

A 45 year old Banker, who held a senior position in a savings bank, in Tauberfranken, Germany, has been sentenced to two years and ten months in prison - For diverting 2.1 million euros (about $2.79 million USD).

It seems he did it with the best intentions though. He wanted to be able to grant loans to poor clients who could not qualify for them...

So, over a period of around 5 years, he diverted money from the accounts of rich clients, to finance the loans (isn't that basically what a bank does anyway?).

Unfortunately he failed to keep reliable records, loosing track of where he had got the money - and who he had loaned it to.

He did manage to put a big chunk of it back where it came from, so that the actual loss to the Sparkasse Tauberfranken Bank finally only totted up to around 640,000 euros. When he couldn’t repair the financial hole he had dug any further he turned himself in to the police. Apparently he never took a cent of the money for himself.

The German media are hailing him as a modern day Robin Hood.

Maybe he should have kept better records. One has to have some sympathy for him, but then the shock of finding all the savings gone from one's account might temper one's sympathy a little…

Done officially it’s known as Micro Finance. Figures have repayments running in the high nineties percentage wise. Perhaps he should have put the idea in the company ‘suggestions box’ - He might have ended up with an award, instead of doing time…

Poor, Poor, Robin (Hat Tip to Robert Hoffman) After all - It is Friday ;-)