The Central
Bank of Nigeria has said that it has recovered over N51.9bn illegally deducted
by commercial banks and returned it to the customers.
The CBN
stated that the amount was illegally removed from the accounts of bank
customers across the country in the past five years.
The Acting
Director, Corporate Communications, CBN, Mr. Isaac Okorafor, disclosed this in
Port Harcourt during an interactive session with stakeholders, including labour
union leaders, in the South-South zone.
Okoroafor
stated that the recovery and return of the funds to customers became necessary
after series of complaints on illegal deductions from their accounts by
commercial bank customers got to the apex bank.
Putting the
exact amount recovered and returned by the CBN Consumer Protection Department
at N51,913,350,828.85, he explained that $18,191,444.19, €26.286,62 and £6,000
were also recovered within the period.
Okorafor,
who was represented by an assistant director in the apex bank, John Attah,
recalled that the CBN received 10,548 complaints, adding that the amounts
recovered were from 5,746 resolved cases.
He stated,
“When such complaints are received, the CBN will embark on a thorough
investigation of what happened and how the deductions were made. If we discover
that the bank was wrong, we will write and order the bank to return the money
to the customer’s account.
“We do not
keep this kind of money in any special account. Someone owns it and the banks
know the accounts from where they made the deductions. So, we mandate them to
pay it back into the accounts.”
He, however,
expressed the apex bank’s continued commitment to customers’ protection, adding
that the interactive session was aimed at educating stakeholders, particularly
labour unions, on some of the financial policy drives of the CBN.
Okorafor
stated that such financial initiatives were targeted at closing the gaps in the
economy to foster development and safety of citizens.
On the Bank
Verification Number, the acting director explained that the initiative was
brought into the banking system to solve the challenges of customer
identification based on finger prints.
“People use
different names to open different accounts for different reasons and purposes;
but with the help of the BVN, we should be able to know who is operating what
account irrespective of the name. This has made criminals and fraudsters, who
are operating secret accounts, to abandon their accounts in order not to be
caught,” he stated.
The Vice
President, Industrial Global Union, Mr. Issa Aremu, expressed gratitude to the
CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, for interfacing with labour unions on
financial literacy since the past three years.
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