Piles of embezzlement complaints lodged against commercial banks are on the rise.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) published an annual report on such complaints from a large number of clients at its headquarters yesterday.
Around 56% of total complaints of forgeries were received against commercial banks by the Financial Integrity and Customer Services Department of BB, according to the report.
The report brought to light the incidents of fraudulence in banks where most cases were related to loans and advances.
Moinul Islam, proprietor of Sylhet Opulance, applied for a loan of Tk7 crore to a private commercial bank to construct a residential hotel in his own property.
Though the loans were sanctioned by the bank in two phases, Moinul failed to withdraw the sum of money as some officials of the respective bank pocketed Tk3 crore.
He filed the complaint with the Bangladesh Bank in this regard.
Moinul’s fund was stolen using his signed blank cheques that were kept in the bank as collateral of the loan.
BB Sylhet office conducted a special inspection about the forgery and found the complaint true. The central bank settled the dispute, however.
Like Moinul, Alim Uddin faced the same fate. Alim is a UK expatriate who filed a complaint that reads his Tk40 lakh savings in a private commercial bank were stolen.
In his complaint, Alim said he purchased an Mudraba Term Deposit Receipt of Tk40 lakh in the year 2011 from Kanaighat Branch, Sylhet, of a private bank.
After some days, he came back from UK and went to the branch to look for his deposit. The branch manager informed him that he had no money in his account.
Later, BB found that the money was embezzled by forging a false account in the name of Alim Uddin.
The central bank instructed the respective bank to return the deposit with profit to Alim and take punitive action against the officers involved in the fraudulence.
The top 10 banks from which the highest number of complaints received during the fiscal year 2014-15 were Sonali Bank, BRAC Bank, Rupali Bank, Agrani Bank, Islami Bank, Janata Bank, Bangladesh Krishi Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Dutch-Bangla Bank and National Bank.
The complaint over mobile banking also increased in the last fiscal year. Of the total complaints, 3.75% against mobile banking were received over telephone and 1.53% written, according to the annual report.
Of the total 3,930 complaints received in the last fiscal year, 56% were against private commercial banks, 28.13% against state-owned banks, 5.86% against foreign banks, 3.82% against specialised banks and 5.82% against others.
