Five Romanians complain after more than EUR 1 mln in money and expensive items goes missing from deposit boxes at bank in Pitesti

More than EUR 1 million belonging to at least five people has gone missing from safe deposit boxes at a BCR bank in the Romanian city of Pitesti. In the most recently reported case, one man appears to have lost EUR 200,000 from his safe deposit box at the branch. The five cases together tally EUR 1 million, which has all gone missing from deposit boxes at the same bank unit. Last week, a man reported that money, gold jewellery and a 100-year old watch, as well as USD 130,000 and RON 49,000 went missing from his deposit box at the bank. This was after a family said USD 131,000 disappeared from their deposit box as well. Both decided to check their deposit boxes after seeing the news about a man in a similar situation, who said EUR 400,000 went missing from his deposit box. This is allegedly the largest amount which went missing. All five people who submitted complaints said they're willing to go through a lie detector test. The bank representatives said their submitted all documents to authorities to uncover the truth, and that they did not exclude any hypothesis at this point. BCR offers the safe deposit box service to clients without asking clients what will be stored inside. Thus clients are the only ones who know what's inside the box and how much it is worth. According to the bank, the security system makes it impossible to enter the treasury room where the deposit boxes are located without being authorized and registered. By procedure, the boxes can only opened with the clients' keys, along with a unique key kept by the bank. Clients enter the room alone so the bank representatives cannot see the content of the boxes. BCR is the largest bank in Romania, with assets worth some EUR 15.6 billion end of June 2013. editor@romania-insider.com