So sweet of him to do that for the poor
... but bad of him to steal....
Whats your take?
Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor might have been an admirable pursuit in medieval England, but it tends to be frowned upon among the upper management of banks -- as one German ex-bank executive has learned to his cost.
Redistribution of wealth is an idea dear to German hearts. The country has a generous social welfare system and whopping 42 percent income tax rates for high earners. One latter-day Robin Hood who decided to take wealth redistribution into his own hands, however, has been sentenced to jail -- after giving himself up to the police.
A German bank employee, identified only as Dragan V., stole money from rich customers to give it to poor ones. He's now been sentenced to two years and 10 months in prison, officials in the southern German town of Mosbach announced Thursday.
The 45-year-old man diverted €2.1 million ($2.8 million) to needy clients while he was a senior executive at a savings bank in the southern region of Tauberfranken. "I felt sympathy for the unemployed and the socially disadvantaged and wanted to help them," the man, who made a full confession, told the court.
At the bank in the town of Lauda he managed to win loans for poor customers by transferring money to their accounts from rich customers, to make the disadvantaged ones look a bit wealthier. At first he tried to fill the inevitable gaps in the poor customers' loan accounts with his own money. Then he started to use other customers' money. Finally -- at the end of 2005 -- he admitted to himself that he had lost track of his illicit deals. He did not, however, profit personally from the embezzlement.
In early 2006 he came clean, first to the bank and then to police. He currently works as a freelance broker for savings accounts and insurance policies and is paying €300 a month back to his former employer.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,488735,00.html