It all started somehow from the Vanino and Soviet Gavan’ ports (Gulf of Tatary’s seacoast). They say at 8pm long lines appeared near DalkomBank’s cash machines. People took money using their payroll cards. Everyone called friends and relatives, encouraging real mob hysteria. In the morning banks’ clients rushed to get their money in the whole region – they cleaned cards and accounts.
At 12.00 there was the first more or less reasonable explanation of the panic. The thing is that most DalcomBank’s clients missed two important events of this big credit company’s life. The first one happened two years ago: all local administration’s budget accounts were transferred from DalcomBank into CenterBank. Secondly, the bank became a part of AFK System, so it is not regional anymore.
But people still think the bank is standalone and areal, and that all budget accounts are still there. And that’s why the information of transferring one federal or regional company’s big payroll card program into VTB or SberBank created a rumor that “budget is taking money from the bank”, so “that’s not right and you need to take all money!”
DalcomBank confirmed the fact of expansion in the number of people who wants to take off their money. As the chief of DalcomBank’s press office Elena Obydennik says, this number is half as much as usual.
“We do not stop people who want to take the cash. All cash machines are full, the bank works as usual,” she says. “We do not understand why this part of our clients decided to take off their money. It looks like it’s all about this news of the global financial crisis. Anyway, our bank has a stable federal position, and we had record-breaking profits after 9 months of this year (310 millions of rubles). Also the bank is a part of AFK system, one of the biggest public corporations which control growth-stock in the interchange economic sectors.
In the evening long lines appeared in many Khabarovsk’s region banks.
All we can add is that it’s not the first time we can see mob hysteria in Khabarovsk. In May last year a rumor of possible and “ready-to-go” earthquake made dozens thousands of Khabarovsk citizens spending all day in the streets, forgetting about their job and homework. By the way – there was no earthquakes in Khabarovsk. Ever.