They say that curiosity killed the cat, and if that curiosity belongs to the director of a CaixaBank office, it is most likely that her position is in danger. As an example of this, the person in charge of an office of that entity in a small town in Gerona who was fired for “gossiping” about the bank details of people in her town. The courts called it fraud and breach of trust.
The case reached the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, which confirmed that the disciplinary dismissal It was completely justified.
Curiosity killed the cat. As detailed in the sentence issued By the Catalan Superior Court of Justice, in November 2023, CaixaBank detected anomalous accesses to its customer database. The director of the Les Preses (Gerona) office had been accessing clients’ banking information without apparent justification. An internal audit revealed the magnitude of the problem: between November 3, 2022 and December 11, 2023, management had made inquiries about 170 different clients on 210 different days.
The most serious thing was the pattern since of those 170 clients consulted, 84 were family members or people in their close circle, and 121 lived in the same town where the director lived. The searches were done mainly by first and last name, something very unusual in banking operations normal in which the user’s ID is used to avoid confusion between users with identical first and last names.
The explanations that did not convince anyone. When the audit investigated the accesses, the director tried to justify herself. First he said it was common to review customer accounts at other offices to confirm that cash transfers between users had been completed correctly. He then stated that some customers had asked him for help because they had had access problems from the application of the mobile. But as more information became known, those excuses began to lose foundation.
The bank confirmed before the court that the majority of those 170 clients had connected through the mobile application on the same day that the director consulted their accounts, which showed that they did not need its intervention.
Without arguments, all he was left with was the truth: she was a gossip. Finally, the worker admitted that she had consulted this data because of “xafardería”, a Catalan term that means simple curiosity or gossip.
She acknowledged that she had not done so at the clients’ request nor was she looking for specific information, but rather motivated by curiosity to know the payments and financial movements of her family, friends and neighbors. He also assured that I had not shared that information with nobody. However, this confession was not enough to save him from the consequences: immediate disciplinary dismissal.
There was abuse of trust and the TSJC confirmed it. CaixaBank did not hesitate to act when the conclusions of the internal investigation were known. On January 31, 2024, he was notified of his disciplinary dismissal on the grounds that his actions constituted a “very serious breach of contractual good faith, fraud and abuse of trust”, in accordance with the provisions of article 54.2.d) of the Workers’ Statute and article 76.4 of the current Collective Agreement for savings banks and financial entities.
The Social Court number 1 of Figueras supported this decision on July 26, 2024. The worker tried to appeal to the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia, but the court rejected all her arguments. The court concluded that “there is no justification” for these consultations and that the conduct “contradicted the code of ethics and the confidentiality regulations that must govern a business as sensitive as banking.” The sentence left no room for doubt, declaring the dismissal proper and definitive.
A lesson in trust and responsibility. As and how they stand out in the specialized environment Economist & Juristthis case leaves important lessons about how access to sensitive information in a financial institution is a privilege that carries responsibility. The director had received training on data protection and the code of ethics, so she was fully aware of the rules she was breaking. His position in the office gave him access to private data of hundreds of people, and used that access to sensitive information to satisfy simple curiosity.
Due to the recurrence of the consultations, the courts understood that this was not an isolated case, but rather a deliberate pattern of conduct that violated the trust placed in it by the entity and its clients.
Image | Unsplash (Rodrigo Rodrigues)
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