Trouble for Access Bank Ghana as Estate mogul sues for stolen identity, poor KYC
Less than one week after the shareholders of both Access and Diamond Banks have voted for merger in Nigeria, Access Bank Ghana, a subsidiary of the emerging financial giant in Nigeria is facing serious court action in over a bank account opened since 2016 with stolen identity that served as a conduit for defrauding customers of an estate investor.
However, industry analysts say the case may not affect the consummated merger deal.
The suspect, one Stanley Koranteng, a director of Diamond Estates, allegedly used the passport number G088021 which belonged to one Lois Adabla but maintained his picture as he secretly opened the company account at the Lapaz branch of the bank in August 2016.
However, Mr Emmanuel Don Agbanyo, owner of Diamond Estates, in an interview with Business Hilights Ghana Bureau Chief, averred that “I did not know what was going on until I received information from a criminal trial at the Amansaman District Court involving Stanley having defrauded customers who had paid various sums of money into the account.”
In a suit filed against the bank and the suspect, Koranteng, the millionaire estate developer in Ghana is seeking one Million Cedi as damages in claims and also “a declaration that the defendant (Access bank) owed him a duty of care in bank customer relationship.”
Banking experts in West Africa and Nigeria in particular had been driving a Know Your Customer (KYC) campaign over the years so as to get rid of such breaches in the banking industry. At the height of the campaign, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) introduced a compulsory Bank Verification Number (BVN) which analysts say, had to a larger extent cleaned up and eliminated such infractions used in starching away either public or corporate funds in some banks that lacked strong customer identity systems.
Other prayers of the plaintiff include that Access Bank Ghana breached its duty of care to him when it failed to comply with its request for documentation in respect of the account standing in the name of the company.
Additional details garnered in the matter showed that even before making the claims, Don Agbanyo had contended among others, that the bank failed to do due diligence in the verification of the Company and had plunged it into huge debts as a result.
The aggrieved plaintiff had further appealed to the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to strictly monitor the operations of the bank and other financial institutions which violated their ethics due to poor supervision, poor background checks on employees and contempt for the Ghanaian banking public.
Efforts made by Business Hilights both in Nigeria and Ghana to reach the Corporate Communications department of the bank weekend failed.
