In February Colleen Majmin made a trip to Nedbank in Eastgate, Johannesburg, to remove an item from Box 78, her husband’s safe deposit box.
Once there, she found that it was now registered to a Mr Smith, and the contents, which, she says, were worth R700 000, had been removed. And no one knows where they’ve gone.
The box had been registered to Majmin’s husband, Selwyn, since 1983. She had access to the box which contained antique jewellery including her 1.2-carat diamond engagement ring. The couple had been paying a monthly rental of R150 for the box, deducted from Selwyn Majmin’s current account.
Then the account ran dry. Or so Nedbank says, claiming it informed Selwyn Majmin in writing of this. But the Majmins say they never received such a letter.
“I thought everything was fine,” says Colleen Majmin. “I have another account there, I go in all the time, and no one said anything to me.”
When she was told that she no longer had a deposit box and that the contents had been removed, she was shown a letter that had been sent to her husband informing him of this. But it had been sent to an address discontinued 15 years ago, she claims.
When the Mail & Guardian asked Nedbank for clarification, Willem Kruger, Nedbank group legal general manager, said the bank’s agreement for letting of a safe deposit box states that: “Should a client not pay his/her rental on a safe deposit box, then the bank will be at liberty to open the box and have its contents removed.”
But when the M&G asked whether the bank had implemented this general policy in relation to the Majmins, Kruger said there was no such “general policy of being at liberty to open safety deposit boxes and … whether this general policy was implemented would be an issue which would need to be covered at a trial in this matter”.
But the “box was opened”, Kruger conceded. He did not specify what has happened to the Majmins possessions, but said the bank has three options when contents are removed: to post them back to the client, store them in a safe, or dispose of them.
Nedbank is not in possession of any items the Majmins claim the box held, Jamie Daniels, Nedbank’s legal adviser, wrote to the Majmins this month, “and as such cannot return same”.
Kruger told the M&G that “it is unfortunate that the client cannot locate the contents of his safe deposit box”.
He added: “The bank did everything in its power to advise the client that she is in breach of her contract and that the bank will take steps to terminate her lease.”
But Majmin feels differently. “They never spent 20c to get hold of me,” she says.
“I live down the road, they have all my details, and no one contacted me.” She also says Nedbank Eastgate told her that two members of staff signed for the contents’ removal, but that they had subsequently left the bank and cannot be traced.
“Someone’s walking around with all my things!” she says.
But herein lies the tricky situation that arises with safe deposit boxes — banks has no record of their contents. Nedbank says that “the client has been unable to provide any proof of what was allegedly stored in the box”.
The privacy of safe deposit boxes creates a relationship based completely on trust and honesty.
But the Eastgate branch manager did have a suggestion for Majmin.
“When I found out what happened I threw my toys in the manager’s office,” says Majmin, “and she told me to relax and go have a dop.”