A bill seeking to raise the punishment for insider fraud by bank employees to a 20-year jail term has passed the second reading.
The bill sponsored by Francis Ejiroghene Waive representing Ughelli North, Ughelli South, and Udu federal constituency, Delta State, seeks to amend section 5 and 7 of the Bank Employee declaration of assets Act 2004.
The amendment is aimed at ensuring that banks in Nigeria have updated data on their staff so that fraudulent activities on a customer’s account could be easily traced to the exact staff involved.
The bill
The bill is titled “An Act to Amend the Bank Employee ETC (Declaration of Assets) Act Cap B1 LFN 2011 and for Related Matters 2020″
The bill seeks to increase the jail term for bank employees involved in fraudulent activities on customers’ accounts from 10 years imprisonment to 20 years in jail.
Rep. Waive told the House during Wednesday’s plenary that the amendment is important in order to curtail the rising fraudulent activities by bank employees and to serve as a deterrent from such Acts.
“It is no longer news that computer fraud, which includes hacking of people’s accounts, forms part of the majority of the fraud perpetrated in our country in recent times and has consistently been on the rise.
“It is also true that most of the online fraud carried out is perpetuated with bank staff as collaborators, and in some cases involving staff who is no longer in the employment of the bank,” Mr Waive said.
“There are currently a lot of reported cases of fraudulent activities by bank employees which include fraudulent transfers/withdrawals, cash suppression, unauthorised credits and fraudulent conversion of cheques, diversion of customer deposits, diversion of bank charges, burglary and presentation of forged or stolen cheques.
“Research shows that some bank staff, aside from documentary fraud, sometimes stage-manage robbery or connive with outsiders to perpetrate such act.
“On further research, it has also been revealed in police investigations on the activities of corrupt bank staff that the fraudsters scout for obituaries of well-to-do members of the public, use bank employees to determine the deceased’s account balance, clone their SIM cards for online transfer and all sorts,” he added.
What you should know
- Section 7 (1) of the Act that the bill seeks to amend states that “it shall be an offence for an employee of a bank to own assets in excess of his legitimate, known and provable income and assets”
- Section 7 (2) states that a bank employee found guilty of the offense in (1) shall on conviction be liable to imprisonment for ten years and shall, in addition, forfeit the excess assets or its equivalent in money to the federal government”.
