Ha tries to stare down new crisis

Citigroup Korea Chairman Ha Yung-ku, a heavyweight in the Korean banking industry, is battling the biggest challenges of his career.

Chief among them are reports that the parent company has left him to grapple with the fallout of recent troubles alone.

It comes in the wake of the theft of the personal information of some 34,000 customers by an employee, who handed it over to a loan broker.

Five members of a voice phishing ring were nabbed for swindling 10 people out of 37 million won ($35,700), three of them being Citi customers, according to police, Tuesday.

The thieves were found to be in possession of data of 1,912 Citibank customers, police said.

The bank promised to compensate the affected customers.

The Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said Thursday that the information of some 50,000 customers was additionally stolen from Citibank Korea and Standard Chartered (SC) Bank Korea.

Ha is an institution of a sort, because of his record of being the nation’s longest-serving bank CEO.

He has headed Citibank Korea since 2004 and is the inaugural chairman of Citigroup Korea, the holding company, since it was founded in 2010.

There are indications that he may be sanctioned by regulators for the scandal.

After a massive data theft case involving banks and card issuers surfaced in January, President Park Geun-hye urged regulators to take stern measures to deal with the problem.

Soon after, the CEOs of the affected firms, including KB Kookmin Bank, KB Kookmin Card, NH NongHyup Bank’s card division, resigned en-masse to take responsibility for the scandal.

The Citi union has been protesting Ha’s plan to conduct an early retirement program for hundreds of employees and close branches as part of a business realignment strategy.

Sources say the bank may cut some 650 jobs through the planned retirement program, and close 56, or 29 percent, of its 196 branches nationwide this year.

The bank conducted a similar retirement program in 2012, in which 199 workers left the bank.

The lender’s net profit fell 8.1 percent from a year earlier to 219 billion won in 2013. The bank is expected to see a turnaround this year on the back of these aggressive cost-cutting measures. By Na Jeong-ju The korea times