ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi has directed two private banks to pay Rs 1.9 million and Rs 0.744 million respectively to their customers who fell victim to online banking fraud at hands of fraudsters.

President also asked Banking Mohtasib to take up matter of banking frauds with State Bank of Pakistan to get essential SOPs issued so that proven fraudulent personnel’s CNICs could be blacklisted, placed at central negative list and no banking/financial facility could be extended to them by banking industry.

President Alvi issued these directions while rejecting two separate representations filed private banks. Citizen namely Qaiser Mehmood was holding an account with private bank received call from number resembling bank’s helpline and caller advised him to activate his disabled digital banking app.

Citizens was trapped and eventually Rs 2 million were transferred from his account through multiple transactions.

Similarly, Brigadier (retd) Muhammad Arif Shaikh received call from fraudsters asking him for his banking credentials to remove some technical flaws from his account. Later, an amount of Rs 994,000 were transferred from his account through 19 transactions.

Banks, then, separately filed representations against Ombudsman’s decisions with President. President held personal hearing of cases and having listened to parties and going through available record, decided cases in complainants’ favour.

President Alvi observed that banks were found non-compliant with SBP’s directives regarding implementation of monitoring systems to detect fraudulent transactions.

Published in The Daily National Courier, January, 22 2024

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