State-run Bank of Baroda (BoB) made it simple and easy for its business correspondents (BCs) to steal money from the accounts of its customers. And some of them did steal Rs22 lakh from 362 customers, internal audit reports and records of the Bank have revealed,
according to a report from Al Jazeera. The audits come after an exposé by The Reporters' Collective (TRC) and
Al Jazeera, which showed the Bank's employees had linked unauthorised mobile numbers to customer accounts that were missing a registered mobile number to onboard them on the Bank's new mobile banking app, bob World. These unauthorised mobile numbers were of Bank staff, managers, guards, their relatives and bank agents in remote areas.
The report says internal documents of the Bank's head office acknowledge this malpractice and show that the Bank's BCs have withdrawn tens of thousands of rupees from customers' accounts using mobile banking. Six customers have lost upwards of Rs1.10 lakh each, whereas one lost almost Rs1.77 lakh. One agent stole more than Rs3.90 lakh.
Al Jazeera says that the Bank's head office has asked the managers concerned to 'initiate necessary action for recovery and restoration of money in customer accounts'.
According to the report, in its nation-wide audit, BoB verified documents of about 422,000 accounts suspected to be wrongfully registered on the app by the bank staff. The Bank's branch staff audited these accounts spread over nearly 7,000 branches across the country on 29th and 30 July 2023, with each employee auditing documents of another branch.
While the final audit reports have duly pointed out discrepancies, indicating proper scrutiny at a higher level, Al Jazeera says these reports also establish the shoddy nature of the internal audit.
Earlier this week, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed BoB to suspend, with immediate effect, any further on-boarding of their customers onto the 'bob World' mobile application.
In a release, RBI says, "This action is based on certain material supervisory concerns observed in the manner of onboarding of their customers onto this mobile application. Any further onboarding of customers of the Bank on the 'bob World' application will be subject to rectification of the deficiencies observed and strengthening of the related processes by the bank to the satisfaction of RBI."
"The Bank has been further directed to ensure that already onboarded 'bob World' customers do not face any disruption on account of this suspension," it added.
In July this year,
a report from Al Jazeera exposed how BoB, India's second-largest public sector bank (PSB), linked the mobile numbers of strangers to boost registrations for its app, 'bob World', thus compromising the security of the account-holders and the mobile users.
Quoting an official who does not want to be named, the report says he and his colleagues were tasked on 24 March 2022 to sign up customers for 'bob World', launched a few months earlier. The officer's branch was given a target of onboarding at least 150 existing Bank customers.
"He and his colleagues learned of a workaround from peers in other branches: fetch the list of bank accounts not linked to mobile numbers, link these accounts to any mobile numbers they could gather – of bank staffers, sanitation and security workers and their relatives—to generate the one-time password (OTP) needed to join the app and sign up these accounts from the back end. The employees would then deregister these customers from the app and reuse the same mobile number in the same manner with other bank accounts," the report says.
According to the report, BoB employees from other states—Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Jharkhand—also confirmed this widely prevalent modus operandi.
According to the Al Jazeera report, internal emails from BoB acknowledged that the safety of tens of thousands of Bank accounts was at risk since they were linked with strangers' mobile numbers.
Emails shared by the Bank official show that branches were asked, in January 2022, to conduct a discreet inquiry about mobile numbers linked to multiple accounts and, in light of those inquiries, to recommend whether the mobile numbers should be withdrawn.
As reported by Moneylife, in many cases, a single mobile number was linked to more than 100 bank accounts. BoB's policy states that one mobile number cannot be linked to more than eight accounts only if all these accounts are of the same family or address.
They've been bribed to create the scam. To shake the rock solid trust the Indian General public has on PSU banks.
This was also done before, in the insurance sector, in the earliest days of privatisation, when the private insurer's struggled against the rock solid trust the LIC held. Then also, some betrayals were intentionally injected-in, to crack the trust barrier.
Name of the game is "crack the trust"
This is win-win for all those who matters.
We have current account with BoB and on 07.02.2021, from our account Rs.53,00,000/- (rupees fifty three lakhs) was stealed on 08.02.2021. we have intimated to branch manager and lodged FIR on the same day. But till date we have not received our money back in our account.
How can a public sector bank cheat customer like this without the fear of reprisal..??.. I hope the Central Govt takes appropriate SWIFT action in this matter and terminate the services of all the ' involved' officers without any mercy..