Customer : Michale John
Category : Investment
Date : 21 August, 2015
Status : In Process
Tags : finance, investment
Case 1
The complainant reported to the bank that he had lost her A.T.M. Card and there were various unauthorized transactions in her account. The bank had recently credited her account with proceeds of a loan amounting to P18,000.00 which had also been withdrawn. She alleged that the card was reported stolen to the bank’s call centre before and it was confirmed to her that the card was blocked.
Issues were discovered
The investigations were concluded and the following issues were discovered:
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That there was no prove that she had contacted the bank to block her card. Either through confirming the name of the bank officer who assisted her and the time. The bank could not locate her message in their telephone system.
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The customer maintained that she only realized after a month when she was making a cheque encashment inside the bank that there were unauthorised withdrawals.
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The bank realized through a video clip, which was run in the presence of the customer that the culprit identified was the customer’s former boyfriend.
The bank maintained that the customer had breach its contract by giving PIN card access to a third party not covered in the contract. The customer disputed having given the culprit access. The Banking adjudicator advised the customer to report the matter to the Police as this was a case of fraud and that if she still strongly feel that the bank was negligent she could still approach the courts for redress.
Case 2
Complainant maintained that whilst she was outside the country, the sum of P38,000.00 was withdrawn from her business account and two personal accounts through an inter -account transfer into his husband’s personal account.
When the transfer was executed the complainants husband was the one who presented the inter account transfer forms and probably set up the person who answered the bank’s call seeking to confirm the transaction. Transfer documents had “identical /similar’ signatures of the account holder in terms of the customer’s mandate.
Investigations revealed that proper documents to effect an account transfer were presented with positive identification indicating the complainant’s husband as the one who enchased the money and skipped the country.
The Banking Adjudicator would want to acknowledge that this matter was complicated and took a long time to be concluded as initially the bank needed to establish the implications of releasing the forensic report it had undertaken on the matter. A resolution by the Banker’s Association of Botswana as to whether this was privileged information or not and whether the Banking Adjudicator could not have access to was a break through on the matter.
From the onset the complainant had been advised to report the matter to the police to avoid prescription seeing that investigations might take long. No award was made in favor of the complainant on these basis as the bank was not found to be negligent. The complainant was advised to follow up the reported matter with the Police.
