Brazil bank fined for making client remove shoes

Caixa Economica Federal bank customers ask for informations at a closed branch in Rio de Janeiro, on September 27, 2011. The bank employees in the whole country are on strike demanding better wages. AFP PHOTO

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil—A Brazilian bank didn’t have a leg to stand on when it forced a client to remove his shoes and do business in his socks, a judge ruled.

Many banks in crime-ridden Brazil have tight security with metal detectors and, on entering the Caixa Economica Federal (CEF) branch in Sao Paulo state, Lourivaldo de Santana was asked to empty his pockets.

But after the watch, phone and other small items, one of the guards “asked him also to remove his boots and then said that if he wanted to enter he’d have to go in socks,” the Sao Paulo federal court spokesman said Tuesday.

Meanwhile, “a crowd was building up at the bank entrance because of the turmoil that occurred.”

De Santana concluded his visit shoeless, but not without suffering “humiliation,” according to a judge, who ordered he be paid 5,000 reais, or about $1,430, in damages.

This was not the only recent clothing-related ruckus at a Brazilian bank.

O Dia newspaper reported Wednesday that a woman in the southwestern Mato Grosso do Sul state got so fed up with not being cleared to pass through the metal detector that she stripped entirely.

“I took off my clothes in a sign of protest,” she was quoted as saying, alongside a picture of her at the bank in her underwear. She now faces indecency charges, O Dia reported.