Someone came to see me at my work place recently. It was a lady accompanied by her brother. The reason that she came to my office was to narrate a rather incredible story that she had been turning around in her mind in a state of indecision whether to visit or not for a few weeks or so she said.
Her story starts with seeing an email sent to her husband supposedly originating from Nyeri branch where I am based in regards to obtaining a loan to purchase a truck. Now the business of banking is all about confidentiality and there was no way I was going to reveal whether this person was a client of the bank or not or even if he had applied for the loan. In any case she had received such information from his private email which meant that she had breached the privacy that personal email entails.
So she starts on her spiel telling me about how she was the party behind the success of their businesses because when he married her he had nothing and then goes on to reveal the husbands lack of financial discipline and how their joint property was now the subject of court cases and auctioneers because he had not been servicing his personal debts including loans taken from other financiers for purchase of trucks. I let it go on for some time…..nothing like a good vent every now and then bofore I asked her if they still lived together and Part 2 of her saga began.
He had taken up with another woman after the successes she had brought him in life and in business even owning a residential / commercial building in one of the towns close to Nyeri jointly with him. He had then abandoned her for the bosom of another woman and was a brute of a man ready to pummel her at a moment’s notice. She in fact did look a little dented possibly from previous encounters with this man and even this visit to my office she revealed would get her killed by him if I was to say a word to this mysterious man.
With little else to say other than to give her assurances that the notes that I was writing would be of immense help to me were he to come calling for a loan, I wished her well and she went off her brother in tow.
I didn’t know what to think! If I had known the man, would I have alerted him to the fact that his wife had visited and I wanted assurances that he would service his loans? What if he went straight to where she was and killed her? Would I not be an accomplice to murder because she had mentioned in the presence of her brother that he was capable of killing her?
Could I rely on the testimony of a clearly bitter woman who had neither taken the trouble to identify herself nor brought any evidence to suggest that theirs was a legally binding marriage? What if this was just a jealous busy body intent on spoiling the reputation and goodwill of an innocent hard working man?
Today in banking we have various tools to confirm the credit worthiness or otherwise of anyone with a borrowing record so any red flag would surely pop up should I make an enquiry as I was required to do for any new loans. In addition we request for bank statements going back for the past 6 months to see someone’s financial history at whichever bank he has an account at to see that his financial dealings have been above board and then require that an account is opened with the bank thereafter. Were all these tools available to me in vain and should I therefore rely on the narrative of a total stranger for my appraisal should the man surface? What if she was telling the truth and the man was indeed a scoundrel?
Let’s wait and see if he turns up then I shall decide what to do!
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