What is intere$ting at this $tage is they are rotten as a conception and institution, corruption has become a characteristic of them, and greedy $cum are attracted to them like flies to $hit:
"Turmoil rocks Boston bank, fired employees claim; In whistle-blower suit, pair say The Cooperative Bank in disarray" by Deirdre Fernandes, Globe Staff March 14, 2015
The Cooperative Bank in Roslindale hired a former board chairman, a dentist with no banking operations experience, to run the institution, according to lawsuits filed recently by two former senior managers. Its personnel director was known to employ many of her personal friends for key roles.
One of its bank presidents was banned from banking by the federal regulators. His successor was banned from banking by regulators, too.
These were among the episodes that added up to “gross mismanagement” at the small community bank, with three locations in the Roslindale, West Roxbury, and Charlestown neighborhoods, according to separate whistle-blower lawsuits filed in the US District Court this week. The lawsuits, filed by Robert Becotte, a former chief financial officer, and John Lynch, a senior commercial loan officer, alleged they were fired from Cooperative Bank last year after they reported much of this alleged wrongdoing to the board of directors and bank regulators.
Both Becotte and Lynch are seeking reinstatement to their jobs, back pay, and an unspecified amount in damages. They declined to comment through their lawyers.
Officials with the Cooperative Bank did not return calls for comment on Friday. The Cooperative Bank, with $301 million in assets and 60 employees, has sufficient capital and its expenses are similar to other banks of its size, according to its financial statements.
State and federal banking watchdogs have cited the bank on three occasions in 11 years, including as recently as September 2013, for shortcomings related to its procedures and policies, according to the lawsuits. Those citations are not generally public because they are part of a bank examination. The Massachusetts Division of Banks has taken no public action against the Cooperative Bank in recent years, a spokeswoman said.
Suzanne Moot, a Milton bank consultant, said the problems highlighted in the complaints are “astounding.”
“Any one of these things happening in most banks would make management apoplectic,” Moot said. “To have all of these happen, and to have it the appear to be sailing along — it’s very, very unusual.”
One of the former bank presidents, Paul Ladouceur, improperly used a company credit card for his personal use, according to the suit, and also persuaded the board of directors to set up an executive retirement plan for himself that would have paid him $1.5 million, as long as he was not fired.
His successor, John McCarthy, who had filed for bankruptcy, secretly used employee accounts to back the third-party checks he cashed because he did not have enough money in his own account, according to the lawsuits. That meant temporary holds were placed on funds in employee accounts until the checks cleared — without the workers’ knowledge. He did this on more than 700 occasions with checks worth at total of $590,000, the lawsuits said.
Ladouceur was fired in 2007 by the board of directors and banned from banking by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in 2010, according to the lawsuits. McCarthy was fired in 2012 and banned by the FDIC in 2013.
McCarthy’s firing was followed by a series of management struggles, according to the lawsuits. In July 2012, the board hired William O’Neill, a dentist and former board chairman as president. Several senior managers, including Lynch and Becotte, took a vote of no confidence. They complained to the board of directors that O’Neill was not qualified and his hiring could be perceived as a conflict of interest, according to the complaint.
When the bank’s senior managers met with the new board chairman to outline their concerns and present a letter of complaint, he told them to, “Burn it,” according to the lawsuit. By January 2014 O’Neill was no longer president of the bank.
The lawsuit, however, suggests that O’Neill had concerns about Becotte’s performance as chief financial officer, particularly in 2012, when McCarthy’s check-cashing problems came to light. In a personnel note, O’Neill said Becotte should have known earlier about the extent of employee accounts getting put on hold so McCarthy could cash checks, according to the lawsuit.
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