Ecobank Harassing workers over $8million Fraud

Ecobank Ghana’s posturing to hoodwink Ghanaians to believe that they are not bothered by the $8m visa card fraud that hit it has placed the bank in a huge quagmire.

Having allowed itself to be embroiled in the massive scandal by not being pre-emptive and anticipatory enough, the bank has now begun to harass innocent Ghanaian employees on spurious and tramped-up charges.

Some of the bank’s innocent workers have had to contend with arrests, threats of dismissal and other forms of intimidating posturing from their management, leaving the real thieving officials off the hook.

An employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told this paper that a certain Stephen Engmann was one of the workers who had been arrested on trumped-up charges, following the scandal. “Stephen Engmann, an innocent guy has been arrested; this hard working worker was sent to the Cantonment police station and detained there. The next day, he was sent to the CID, 4th floor, room 12,” another worker said.

According to them, Stephen’s charges were “aiding and abetment of crime and stealing.” This DAY’s sources say Stephen was poached from United Bank for Africa (UBA) with all kinds of promises which were never fulfilled by Ecobank Ghana. He had to find money to pay off the car loan he secured from UBA. According to the sources, managers who have to be held responsible for their actions or inactions that has led to customers of the bank losing money are strangely treated like sacred cows. They include the company’s Directors in charge of data system and operations.

This paper has found out that E-process, a subsidiary company, set up by Ecobank Group to manage its data system, with its Managing Director being Eddy Ogbo, a Nigerian, has seen its database broken into by fraudsters, leading to the loss. The Manager in charge of the e-zwich and the entire data system is Lola Ade, also a Nigerian. This DAY’sEcobank sources have revealed that ever since the scandal broke, Lola Ade, being one of the Directors, who is head of the company’s e-zwich and therefore manages its data system, and who, under normal circumstances, has to be questioned or at least be part of those who can help unravel the mystery surrounding the scandal, has not been invited for questioning at all.

“She manages the zwich but when the thing happened they never even interviewed her; they never even questioned her; the people working under her are the Ghanaians; they just came and picked up these Ghanaians and harassed them, asking them irrelevant questions,” one of the workers told this paper in an exclusive interview. Explaining to this paper how Ecobank Ghana is bearing the brunt of the scandal, the source revealed Ecobank Ghana has had to “cough the money because they are the Principal Members of Visa and they are sponsoring Ecobank Cameroun.”

According to the source, all Principal Members connect to Visa direct but the non-principal members, known as “Associates” have to connect to Visa through a Principal Member.

“So when the fraud happened, Visa was just debiting Ecobank Ghana because it has put money there as “collateral” and this was used to defray the “debt” of $8m,” the source added.

It said the “collateral” must not be depleted or even fall below a certain amount or the Principal Member risks its license.

According to the source, this explains why Ecobank Ghana had had to “top up its collateral” which was fast depleting.

“Ecobank Ghana realised that it had no money in its account with Visa and through investigations discovered that Ecobank Cameroun had done a lot of fraudulent transactions,” it added.