HSBC has no clue who owns some of its safe deposit boxes  and a court has turned down its request for permission to open them and check their contents.

The bank admitted it has lost details of the ownership of 22 lockers used by customers to store valuable objects.

The bank cannot expect the court’s intervention (to make up for) its deficiencies- Court

But when it applied for permission to open them, Mr Justice Giovanni Grixti, sitting in the First Hall of the Civil Court, said the bank could not expect the court to intervene to fix its grave error.

The safe deposit boxes are located at the St Andrew’s, Sliema and Birkirkara branches.

They have never been claimed by their owners, who also stopped paying the annual subscription fee for the service.

Bank wants to make sure boxes contain nothing illegal

The bank explained that it had stopped offering the service in April 2015. As a licensed and regulated financial institution with strict obligations and responsibilities, particularly when it comes to the laws against money laundering, it felt it should not keep items belonging to third parties without knowing what those items were, as there was a possibility they were linked to some criminal activity.

HSBC said it had managed to terminate the safe deposit box service with most customers but 22 of the lockers had remained unclaimed.

Given the passage of time, it no longer had details about the people who used them and, despite several attempts, it has not managed to identify the depositors.

The boxes can be opened using one key held by the bank and the other by the customer. The bank said it was obliged by law to hold on to the contents until it is asked to return them. But it wanted the court to authorise it to have the lockers opened to make an inventory of the items before sealing them again.

The reason for its request was to ensure that the lockers did not contain anything illegal or linked to criminal activities, the bank told the court.

The judge said he understood the bank’s requirement to become aware of the contents of the boxes but he could not understand how the bank had lost all documentation related to the customers who had been paying an annual fee to deposit their valuables.

He observed that one of the conditions of the service agreement was that the bank could not check what was deposited in the safe’s lockers and that they were to remain sealed.

The judge also noted that, had the bank held a proper record of the customers who had rented these lockers, it would have been able to open them.

“The bank cannot expect the court’s intervention (to make up for) its deficiencies,” the court said as it threw out HSBC’s request.