KEY POINTS:
A former ASB Bank fraud investigator says he was forced to quit because managing director Hugh Burrett went easy on a customer who passed off a counterfeit US$70,000 ($87,000) bank draft.
Malcolm Chamberlin spent all 36 years of his working life at the ASB Bank until a dispute over the way he treated the customer led him to "lose all trust and confidence" in it.
The ASB Bank denies the claim, saying he deliberately escalated the dispute to engineer a payout.
Mr Chamberlin's claim of "constructive dismissal" was heard by the Employment Relations Authority yesterday.
Mr Chamberlain told the authority he was alerted a counterfeit US$70,000 draft had been deposited in the customer's account in February last year.
Mr Chamberlin said counterfeit US drafts were a well-known scam and the cause of the ASB Bank's biggest ever one-off loss to fraud of $1.2 million.
He said the customer had already had another counterfeit draft for US$2000 ($2483) dishonoured by the bank a month before.
Once the customer admitted both drafts had come from the same person, Mr Chamberlin - who had investigated fraud for 20 years - deemed him "a risk" to the bank, froze his accounts and forwarded the file to police.
The customer complained in an email copied to Mr Burrett, saying he had acted in good faith with the draft by banking it to check its validity and Mr Chamberlain had taken an "insulting and unnecessary measure".
The authority was told the ASB Bank took the customer's side and gave his accounts back, withdrew the police complaint, apologised, sent shopping vouchers and flowers.
Mr Chamberlin said he was told he could resign and take the gratuity of a year's salary of $62,000 he was owed for working at the bank for more than 34 1/2 years, or stay and face disciplinary action. Mr Chamberlin left work without taking the payout and began the constructive dismissal claim.
He told the authority Mr Burrett had treated the customer differently to "hundreds" of others who had acted in a similar way.
For the ASB Bank, lawyer Simon Dench said Mr Chamberlin had mishandled the customer, then deliberately "escalated" the dispute in order to get a "golden handshake" payout as well as the gratuity of a year's salary he was owed.
He said Mr Chamberlin should have checked the customer's explanation that the teller had told him to bank the draft to check its validity.
The authority was not told why the customer had the drafts but a transcript of a conversation implied it was some kind of payment from an overseas buyer for his business.
Mr Chamberlin said he could have retired at any time and been paid the gratuity, and the inference he wanted more was "absolute rubbish".
Mr Chamberlin told of receiving a letter from Mr Burrett after he had resigned "offering me a job", and described it as "further intimidation".
The ASB Bank said it was a standard form letter sent to people who had resigned.
The authority will take final legal arguments before making a decision.
