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Gold traded at VND 17,000/tael on ACB trading floor
A rare event occurred yesterday on the HCM City-based ACB (Asia Commercial Bank) gold trading floor: an investor successfully bought 90 taels of gold at VND 17,000/tael ($1). However, another uncommon event occurred on the same day: ACB accessed the investor’s account and spontaneously sold 90 taels of the investor, also at VND 17,000/tael.
Nguyen Anh Son, an investor at the My Dinh transaction point in Hanoi, sent a complaint letter to local press agencies yesterday, appealing the behavior of ACB.
In the letter, Son wrote that on the morning of December 9, he ordered the purchase 30 taels of gold at VND 16.15mil/tael. After that, he placed another order to purchase 10 taels at VND 15.9mil/tael. Moreover, he placed another order to purchase 30 taels at VND 15.5mil/tael, and all the orders he placed were matched.
Son made all the transactions with the online service provided by ACB.
After checking the transactions, he found out that all the gold purchase orders were matched at VND 17,000/tael. He immediately ordered to sell 90 taels at VND 16.265mil/tael. With the VND 200 million Son had in his account early in the morning, Son’s account had over VND 1.6 billion after the transactions.
However, his joy could not last for long. At 9:00 am, Son discovered that ACB, the runner of the gold trading floor, accessed to his account and placed orders to sell 90 taels of gold in total, at VND 17,000/tael.
When Son tried to contact the gold transaction centre in HCM City, he was told that the bank had to do that to correct the mistake ACB’s staff made in quoting the gold price. The actual gold price was VND 17,000,000/tael, not VND 17,000/tael as previously shown on the electronic board.
Son was told that the behavior of intervening into the accounts of clients is legal.
Son was not satisfied with the explanation, saying that ACB must be responsible for its employees’ mistakes, while ACB must not spontaneously sell his gold.
“I strongly believe that ACB’s spontaneous intervention into the account of investors is illegal and unacceptable,” Son said.
He added that if investors make the same mistake (entering wrong numbers in sale prices), they will lose money.
ACB has admitted the mistake in the press release by the bank sent to press agencies on the evening of December 9.
The bank has attributed the trouble to the mistake made by a gold trading floor’s staff. The gold price should be read ‘VND 17,000,000/tael’ instead of VND 17,000/tael.
ACB said that the bank has been trying to contact the clients who purchased gold yesterday morning at VND 17,000/tael to apologize for the mistake. It said that most of the clients agreed with the decision made by the bank to repair the mistake.
However, some other investors expressed their protest against ACB’s behavior of accessing investors’ accounts and the spontaneous sale of investors’ gold.
Nguyen Thanh Toai, Deputy General Director of ACB, said: “The bank has apologized to its clients. If investors still do not agree with the bank’s solution, they can make appeals to higher levels, while the bank will obey the verdicts to be made by the courts.”
VNE, VietNamNet
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