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- <text id=91TT2050>
- <title>
- Sep. 16, 1991: Business Notes:Investigations
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1991
- Sep. 16, 1991 Can This Man Save Our Schools?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- BUSINESS, Page 49
- Business Notes
- INVESTIGATIONS
- Breaking the Bank
- </hdr><body>
- <p> It was bad enough when some 300,000 Rhode Island bank
- customers discovered last Jan. 1 that they were cut off from
- their money. Democratic Governor Bruce Sundlun had closed down
- 45 banks and credit unions following the collapse of the Rhode
- Island Share and Deposit Indemnity Corporation, which backed up
- deposits. Eight months later, legions of penny-pressed retirees
- and other average customers are still unable to get at some $1.2
- billion in deposits. But what proved to be too much was the
- disclosure last week that 14 businessmen, government officials
- and bank executives, acting on inside information that RISDIC was
- in its death throes, had quietly withdrawn $4 million from their
- own accounts in December.
- </p>
- <p> "RISDIC insiders abused their position for personal
- benefit at the expense of the depositor," said the chairman of
- a state commission investigating the disaster. If the 14 do not
- return the money, the panel recommended court action against
- them. The revelations are only likely to fuel the fury of Rhode
- Island's put-upon depositors. A local consumer activist is
- calling for Sundlun's resignation if all frozen funds are not
- defrosted by Dec. 31, the anniversary of RISDIC's fall.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
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