SYDNEY: About 300 staff of National Australia Bank have been fired or left the company as a result of internal investigations into wrongdoing, Chief Executive Andrew Thorburn said on Friday, following public revelations of misconduct across the sector.
Thorburn said he was ashamed of the bank’s behaviour and admitted he had been wrong to oppose a commission of inquiry which has exposed scandal after scandal in the country’s greed-driven banking culture.
“It’s been a particularly difficult and shameful year,” Thorburn told a parliamentary committee in his first public comments since the quasi-judicial inquiry began hearing evidence of financial sector wrongdoing earlier this year.
More than 1,200 staff had been questioned about their adherence to the bank’s code of conduct as part of the internal probe, he said. Seven hundred of those questioned were found wanting and over 300, or less than 1 per cent of total staff, were “either terminated or have left,” Thorburn said.
“If there’s anybody who’s committed a fraud or absolute clear misconduct they’re terminated immediately and files in many cases are handed straight to police,” he said.
A NAB spokeswoman declined to provide further detail about which department the staff worked for or what jobs they held.
— Reuters
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
