Zenith, Diamond Banks Lead In Defrauding Customers

Banking fraud may not be new in Nigeria as customers have continued to inundate their respective banks with complaints of illegitimate transactions perpetrated by their banks; Zenith Bank Plc occupies the driver’s seat while Diamond Bank Plc takes its seat in the owner’s corner.Findings by TLT show that while majority of the banks are doing everything to curtail bank frauds perpetrated within, the security measures put in these two of Nigeria’s most patronised banks have been so permeable and porous that unscrupulous elements in these banks always have a field day.E-banking is identified as the number one method through which customers of Zenith Bank and Access Bank get defrauded. Information obtained by TLT shows Zenith bank has the highest number of customer complaints and dissatisfaction with regards to anomaly in Automated Teller Machine (ATM) transactions.Gbenga (other details withheld), a customer of Zenith Bank who operates a current account had circulated a blackberry broadcast message castigating Zenith Bank for deducting a specific sum of money from his account at its Ogunnusi Road, Ojodu-Berger branch after his attempted transaction through the use of his ATM card had failed. The broadcast message explained how he tried to make withdrawals but the transaction was declined. Few seconds after, he received alert debiting his account of the amount he had intended to withdraw. He went into the bank immediately to complain, was apologised to and promised that his account would be credited in not more than 24 hours, having filled a form given to her at the branch. He chose to broadcast his frustration on BB when, after two weeks, no refund had been made by the bank and there were no signs it was doing anything on it as he was not communicated to again about efforts of the bank to credit his account (if there was any). When he threatened a court action and media war against the bank, it quickly settled the matter on the spot right there in the banking hall.If his broadcast message failed to impress the management of Zenith, it succeeded in exhuming other frauds perpetrated by the banks and their modes of fleecing unsuspecting customers of their hard earned monies. Debola narrated her ordeals in the hand of the bank when her account was debited with a sum for which she did make transactions of any kind.Hassan had his account debited twice for an e-commerce transaction he made when bought a pair of sneakers online in one of Nigeria’s e-commerce websites. He is yet to be refunded as at the time of filing this report. TLT also gathered fraudulent transfers/withdrawals through insider facilitation, internet banking and suppression of customer deposits take their place after ATM transactions. The case of three employees of Zenith Bank arrested by the Special Anti-Robbery Squad in the bank headquarters on Ajose Adeogun Street, Victoria Island, Lagos, is yet to be dispensed with. A $2 million fraud was unearthed last November. According to PUNCH Metro who exclusively reported the story, a senior official of the bank, Ms. Olubukola Oritogun, and two others allegedly defrauded unsuspecting customers of the said sum. A fourth yet-to-be identifed person is said to be on the run. PUNCH Metro gathered that Oritogun and her accomplices were allegedly in the habit of informing wealthy customers who wanted to buy dollars that there was a dollar account in the bank that they could purchase them from. “Oritogun would inform some persons that if they wanted to buy dollars, it was available in the bank. She would make the account details available to the customer. Unknown to the victim, the dollar account is owned by another customer of the bank,” a source who pleaded anonymity had told Punch Metro “The victim would then ask his own contact in the bank to check the account. Once it has been confirmed that the account indeed has a certain amount of dollars, the victim would then transfer the naira equivalent of what he wanted to buy to Oritogun in exchange for the dollars.” She was said to have defrauded several persons in that manner until a complaint was lodged at SARS. It was also gathered that on the day of Oritogun’s arrest, she had already booked a flight to the United States and was preparing to flee the country. It was learnt that the police had recovered N166m of the stolen funds. In 2010, Tridac Nig. Ltd established a serious case of fraudulent charges against Zenith Bank in 2012 after it (Tridac) had employed the services of Forensic Consulting, which came up with mountains of financial underhand dealings that exposed Zenith operating at the zenith of banking fraud in Nigeria. Things only normalised when Jim Ovia, former MD of the bank was advised to explore out-of-court settlement with Tridac Nig. Ltd.

Many operators of current accounts in Diamond Bank have bitterly complained about illegal deduction of spurious bank charges while saving accounts’ holders have said it was in the corporate culture of the bank to reduce the interest payable to savings account arbitrarily. It is revealed by an insider that Diamond Bank has most fabricated semantics to describe these deductions. Diamond, like Zenith and other banks, also have cases of criminal-and-staff connivance to commit financial crimes against which punitive measures are always taken when such acts are discovered, the bank has express approval from the top echelon of the management to deduct some “crumbs” (as one official of the bank described) as long as a name can be put on the deduction. Diamond Bank earns stupendous illicit return on this type of charges. How Banks Rob Their Customers succinctly gives a scenario: “For example, just imagine a bank having one million current account holders and that each month, the bank surreptitiously and clandestinely debits N 1, 000 illegally which would translate into N 1 billion monthly and N 12 billion annually just like that. Only very few customers would feel the punch if N 1 000 is illegally deducted from its account monthly, whilst many bank customers would not even bother to notice it.” Diamond Bank knows how to do this efficiently and makes billions from it. Only last year, Delta State Government blacklisted Diamond Bank and Union Bank for allegedly defrauding it of N1.1 billion paid by the American energy giant, Chevron Nigeria Limited, CNL, as tax in 2012. The government alleged that the money paid by the oil major through the Delta State Board of Internal Revenue, DSBIR, in December last year was not credited to its account until the authorities in the agency raised the alarm in January. According to the Chairman of the Delta State Board of Internal Revenue, DSBIR, the fraud was discovered at the end of 2012 when the board was reconciling its accounts, adding that the board was shocked to discover that the total amount expected in the account of the board was short of N1.1bn. Cases abound of how the EFCC hounded top managers in the bank into different court rooms across the nation for one nefarious financial crime or the other.