S/ Hanzawa Junichi, President, MUFG Bank: We take this matter very seriously, as it shakes the very foundations of the banking business, which is based on trust and confidence. We would like to offer our sincere apologies to our customers and all those involved.    

MUFG President Hanzawa revealed that a former female bank employee in her 40s stole assets from about 60 customers’ safe deposit boxes.   

He said that she committed the theft while working at two branches in Tokyo for four and a half years.    

She opened their safety deposit boxes without permission and stole cash, valuables and other assets.   

The total amount of the theft is estimated to be over 1 billion yen.    

The former employee was in charge of managing the spare keys for customers’ safe deposit boxes at the branches and she used her position to open them.   

MUFG Bank said that it has inspected all of the approximately 130,000 safety deposit boxes nationwide.    

The bank has not yet confirmed any similar problems at other branches so far,  

but there have been dozens of reports of possible theft at these two branches, in addition to the 60 customers initially reported.   

The bank said that compensation has already begun for customers whose theft has been confirmed.    

In addition, as a measure to prevent a recurrence, the bank announced that it will stop managing spare safety deposit boxes at each branch and change to a system of central storage at the head office by January 2025.    

Concerning the incident, the Financial Services Agency ordered MUFG Bank to submit a report on this incident.    

Other banks have already begun to investigate the security issues for safety deposit boxes and this has become a problem that concerns the trust of banks.