Bank denies responsibility for Army Command theft – Watch

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Bank denies responsibility for Army Command theft – Watch

6:10 CAT | 15 Jun 2017

Miramar

Mozambique’s largest commercial bank, the Millennium-BIM (International Bank of Mozambique), has denied any responsibility for the fraud that occurred in the Army Command, which keeps its money in a BIM account.

Four officers and five civilians are on trial before the Maputo City Court. The prosecution claims that the soldiers, who worked in the finance department of the Army Command, faked wage payments and drained the money into bank accounts held by people outside the army, mostly relatives and lovers. The total stolen was 36 million meticais (worth about 1.2 million US dollars at the time), between 2010 and 2015.

On Tuesday, according to the report on the trial in the independent newssheet “Mediafax”, Jose Alfaica, the manager of the BIM account used by the Army Command to pay wages, said the bank did not interfere in payments. It simply paid out as requested by the account holder.

Alfaica said he only became aware of the fraud when he was questioned by prosecutors. Before this contact, he added, it was impossible to know, merely from looking at the account that it was being used for criminal purposes.

The bank had no way to detect the fraud, he said. It simply checked the signature of the account holder, saw whether there was enough money in the account, and then complied with the payment instructions.

In order to pay their staff, the bank provides its institutional clients with a digital platform. In the case of the Army Command, that platform was operated by two people, Ernesto Rufino and Ismael Abdul, regarded by the prosecution as the key figures in the fraud.

Another Millennium-BIM official, Alberto Tovela, said “any anomaly or undue use of the system is the responsibility of the client. Each user has a password for access which only he can alter”.