HONG KONG: SOME 20 employees of DBS Hong Kong have been arrested or hauled off for questioning by Hong Kong’s anti-corruption agency for illegally using customers’ personal data to sell high-interest loans via an unauthorised call centre in China.
The Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) this week moved in on these employees, who had allegedly circumvented cold-calling rules, an Apple Daily report on Thursday said. These direct-sales bankers in a team of about 100 are not allowed to cold-call customers in Hong Kong to sell high-interest loans. As a workaround, they allegedly bribed managers within the bank to get customers’ data. After running the internal bribery scheme, the bankers then passed on the customer data to a call centre in China that tries to sell the loans. These loans typically have an annual interest rate of more than 10 per cent, Apple Daily said.
