BoG must sanction banks, staff found culpable in defrauding customers – Dr Atuahene

The Central Bank has been urged to sanction commercial banks, financial institutions and their staff who are found culpable in defrauding customers.

This is view of a banking consultant, Richmond Atuahene who believes that the banking sector regulator must be proactive in addressing these infractions which keep occurring.

Speaking in an interview on Accra-based Asaase Radio, Dr Atuahene said, “I believe Bank of Ghana should be very proactive and sanction some of these banks and must make sure that all these incidents are reported because I have an experience.”

“In my case, they suppressed it, and these three guys who caused this mess were able to get onto a new institution,” he disclosed.

Dr Atuahene warned that these fraud-related incidents, if not addressed, will continue to cause vulnerabilities in the banking sector.

Meanwhile, Ghana’s banking sector and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions (SDI) lost approximately, GH¢56 million in 2022, representing a 7.88 percent reduction compared to the GH¢61 million recorded in 2021.

However, the number of attempted fraud cases for the banking and SDI sectors in 2022 increased to 2,998, as compared to 2,347 cases in 2021, which is a 27.74 percent rise.

This was contained in the 2022 trends and statistics of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) Banks, SDIs and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) fraud report, covering January 1 to December 31, 2022.

It was observed that forgery and manipulation of documents, fraudulent withdrawals, cheque fraud, cyber/email and cash theft (cash suppression), were the major drivers (top five) fraud typologies that impacted most of the financial institutions.

Forgery and manipulation of documents also emerged as the prominent fraud typology, recording the highest loss of GH¢33 million.

In addition, money fraudulently withdrawn from customers’ accounts resulted in GH¢7 million losses, most of which the Central Bank observed involved staff of banks and SDIs, while cheque fraud, arising from cloned cheques accounted for a loss value of GH¢5 million.

The report however indicated that the fraud cases involving staff decreased to 188 in 2022, as compared to 278 in 2021.

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