Prime
There’s more to bank fraud than you think
Bank fraud is a common thing with growing technologies.
What you need to know:
- Therefore fraud is generally not in terms of money leaving a client’s account without an explanation but sometimes there are back door charges which are the biggest form of organised bank fraud.
I read a story in the Daily Monitor about a woman who spent months chasing her money amounting to Shs21 million that was allegedly defrauded from her bank account in one of the local banks in the country.
As a former staff of one of the banks in this country, allow me speak up on some other silent defrauding methods used by the banks.
Although this time its to the benefit of the bank at the end of a year as they balance their books. At one time, I worked in the remote Karamoja region with one of the banks. Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) handed us a deal to channel funds for the beneficiaries of compensation funds for the then upgrade of the Soroti to Moroto Road. Karamoja is a majorly remote area and for majority of these beneficiaries, it was their first time experiencing financial services.
When the funds were remitted to the different accounts, branch management asked us to debit the beneficiaries fees for an ATM card (Shs15,000), a cheque book (Shs 25,000), piggy banks (Shs20,000) and account opening fees (Shs20,000).
Majority of these items such as piggy banks and cheque books were never actually issued to these customers. Note that all these are not regulated but here we were “illegally” levying fees to boost our branch performance at the end of the year.
The only Bank of Uganda accepted charges for one opening an account was Shs25,000 of which shs15,000 was for the ATM card. Therefore ignorant clients were losing about Shs80,000 to the bank in an organised siphoning aimed at boosting performance.
According to a key fact document which is attached to the account opening documents, a potential client has the regulated charges to which they are to append consent inform of a signature. Therefore the backdoor charges amounted to fraud that Bank of Uganda should have possibly cracked a whip on the said bank.
It didn’t happen and hundreds lost monies that were probably reported as profits and staff received a pat on the back with a pompous end of year party for the good work done.
Therefore fraud is generally not in terms of money leaving a client’s account without an explanation but sometimes there are back door charges which are the biggest form of organised bank fraud.
Name with-held
