Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 October 1887 — THE NATIONAL BANK LAW. [ARTICLE]

THE NATIONAL BANK LAW.

A Proposed Amendment Which Will Prevent Compounding ot Felony. Washington Special. In his next report to Congress the Comptroller of the Currency will include an important suggestion to the eflect that the national bank act be so amended as to prevent, tinder severe penalty, the compromising by any bank of any case of misappropriation, embez zlement, misappropriation of funds or anything else which now renders any officer or employe of a national bank liable to a criminal prosecution under the acts now in force. The sections of the Revised Statutes relating to the national banks set out with great clearness and exactitude of language the various acts that are made criminal offenses. Embezzlement or tampering with any of the books, records or securities of a bank by any one connected with it, the counterfeiting of a bank note, the having in one’s possession of plates from which notes are printed, and in fact any other thing of the same character, are all severely punished, but nothing is said about a cashier getting away with SIOO,OOO and the directors agreeing not to prosecute him if he returns $50,000. Compoundings felony is illegal, yet the Revised Statutes are silent oh this point, aud in compilation of the various sections made by the Comptroller of Currency for the guidance of national bank officers not a word is said about the subject. Yet, as a matter of fact, officers and employes have embezzled funds and escaped the penitentary, either because they stole enough to make a respectable showing by a compromise, or else because their bondsmen made good the amount. A press dispatch from Glens Falls, N. Y., early this week, reported Charles B. Ide, bookkeeper of the First National Bank of that place, an embesaler to the extent of SIB,OOO. “Ide will not be prosecuted,” the dispatch concluded. • Abrahams,when asked about the matter, said that banks were not supposed to compromise cases of this kind, and it was certainly not in the interest of good morals to do so. The office of Comptroller of the Currency, he Raid, was not charged with criminal prosecutions, but he thought it Ought to be taken out of the power of a bank to grant immunity from a criminal prosecution, and it ought to be made incumbent on the bank to bring the criminal to justice.