Staff of Banks and other Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions involvement in fraud, constituted 53.46% of total fraud cases in 2021, a report by the Bank of Ghana has noted.

This canker continued to increase in the year under review.

Statistics indicate that staff involvement in fraud cases increased to 278, as compared to 253 in 2020, representing an increase of 9.88% in year-on-year terms.

For 2021, the Rural and Community Banks recorded the highest rate of staff involvement in fraud with a figure of 46.04%.

The Universal banks accounted for 28.06%, while the Savings and Loans companies accounted for 16.55%.

The Bank of Ghana said the consistently high rate of staff involvement in fraud cases reported by Banks and SDIs may be due to lack of adequate control systems in the financial institutions (especially the Rural Banking sector), poor background investigations for prospective, newly appointed and temporal staff, poor remuneration in the Banking and SDI sectors, among others.

The persistent rate of increase in staff involvement in fraud recorded over the last three years shows that the banking sector, especially the Rural and Community Banking sector has not put in place enough effort into curbing the trend.

The EMI sector reported a significant number of mobile money (MOMO) fraud incidents and loss values in 2021. EMIs recorded 12,350 MOMO related fraud incidents in 2021.

The total value of fraud reported by EMIs for the 2021 amounted to ¢14.2 million.

The total E-Money related loss recorded by EMIs in 2021 amounted to approximately ¢12.8million.

Cheque cases

The year 2021 saw an upsurge in the incidence of cheque fraud as compared to 2020.

The number of cheque fraud cases reported increased from 16 cases in 2020 to 113 cases in 2021 representing a 606.25% increase. Most of the reported incidents were related to cloned cheques.

Impersonation cases

Impersonation also recorded a significant increase in the number of cases reported.

The case count for impersonation in 2021 stood at 20, as compared to 3 cases in 2020, representing an increase of 566.66% in year-on-year terms.

Burglary cases

23 cases of burglary were recorded in 2021, as compared to six cases recorded in 2020, representing an increase of 283.33% in year-on-year terms.

Cyber/email fraud cases

Cyber/email fraud recorded 50 cases in 2021, as compared to 28 cases in 2020, representing an increase of 78.57% in year-on-year terms.

Credit related fraud however recorded 43 cases in 2021, as compared to 18 cases in 2020, representing an increase of 138.88% in year-on-year terms.