Nigeria Deposit Insurance Company (NIDC) on Tuesday disclosed that banks in the country were ripped off over N5 billion by fraudsters between January and September 2020.
The insurance company said the losses which spanned only nine months, was comparable to the financial losses insured institutions
Mrs. Omotola Abiola-Edewor, the NDIC’s executive director, corporate services, stated this at the Corporation’s annual capacity building programme for law enforcement agencies.
The programme with the theme: “Effective investigation and prosecution of banking malpractices that led to the failure of banks in Nigeria”, was held in Lagos.
Abiola-Edewor, represented by an NDIC director, Joshua Etopidiok, referenced a report recently released by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS) as the source of the figures.
She added that a total of 52,754 fraud cases were reported to the NDIC against 37,817 in 2018 and 26,182 in 2017, according to the NDIC’s 2019 annual report.
The amount involved in the fraud cases stood at N204.65 billion in 2019, compared to N38.93billion in 2018 and N12.01 billion in 2017, Abiola-Edewor said.
She said the total actual loss declined from N15.15billion in 2018 to N5.46billin in 2019.
Abiola-Edewor explained that the fraud incidents could be attributed to an increase in the sophistication of fraud-related techniques, such as hacking, cybercrime as well as an increase in Information Technology related products and usage, fraudulent withdrawals and unauthorised credit.
“The channels and instruments through which the reported frauds and forgeries were perpetrated indicated that ATM/Card-related fraud had the highest frequency, accounting for 49.78 per cent of fraud cases followed by web-based internet banking frauds with 21.02 per cent.
“However, the value of losses was higher in web-based internet banking frauds against ATM card-related fraud,” she said.
The NDIC Executive Director noted that the company’s collaboration with sister agencies in law enforcement was to curtail such crimes which were capable of causing irreversible damage to the banking system’s stability.
Also speaking at the event, NDIC legal department director, Mr. B. A. Taribo, said the objective of the workshop is to develop capacity amongst law enforcement agencies in the investigation and prosecution of banking malpractices, with special emphasis on failed banks.
Taribo said the workshop would provide needed synergy among the relevant NDIC staff and the relevant law enforcement officers involved fight against banking fraud.
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