Will You Report A Strange Bank Deposit?

by ALEX P. Vidal

An amount of US $19,623.60 or an equivalent of Philippine P843,814.80 (at a conversion rate of US$1.00 to Php42.00) was wrongly deposited in my (name of bank deleted) California branch checking account recently.

I can withdraw the money via ATM (or part of the full amount), leave the United States surreptitiously and pretend I’m innocent (unless I have no plans of coming back).

But money is not everything in this world. Peace of mind is. To have a peace of mind, we must have a clear conscience.

But, my gosh, I badly needed cash; I was going to the Philippines and, believe it or not (I’m not making this up, I swear), I only had Philippine P1,250 cash in my wallet (the P200 I always reserved for terminal fee at the NAIA domestic airport for my Manila to Iloilo PAL flight. Shuttling from the United States to the Philippines back and forth twice in two months proved to be costly for an ordinary journalist).

MORAL LAW

Clear conscience, can we eat it? Can it help defray for our daily expenses in these hard economic times? No. But it is the moral law that governs our whole moral life. No external laws or sanction are required. Conscience forbids us to lie to ourselves or do harm to ourselves, as well as to others — in this case, the bank as institution!

Before I was tempted to withdraw part of the amount (and face the consequences later as what normally happens in many cases), I was quickly struck by guilt and zapped by a specific kind of consciousness-moral awareness, an inner sense of right and wrong that has compelling power. The feeling was so familiar with me as I recalled having experienced a similar encounter, nay clinical test in Pasadena, California when I visited my psychiatrist last year.

BOUND

Nobody has the monopoly of this unique feeling. Not even saints, demigods and hollier-than-thou moral preachers in the pulpit.

We are all actually bound by it as it commands us–including the ruffians, dolts, money launderers, 5-6 operators, pimps, and bloodsuckers. It is our Pyramid of Cheops.

If we disobey it, we feel remorse or anxiety. To experience or feel it is to believe! Therefore, the first thing I will do upon my return in the United States is to report the matter to the bank management (assuming that they still haven’t discovered the error yet).

I am embarrassed to admit that I am guilty of not immediately reporting the matter to them. No excuses! /MP