President Dr Arif Alvi on Thursday upheld the decision of the Banking Mohtasib directing a private bank to credit the lost amount of Rs800,000 to the victim of bank fraud.
Rejecting the representation of the bank against the decision of the Mohtasib, the president observed that the bank was at fault for having incorporated the wrong contact numbers of the account holder in the bank system, which prevented any remedial step on receiving SMS alerts.
Complainant Naveera, who maintained an account with Muslim Commercial Bank’s Gulshan-e-Ravi Branch, Lahore, suffered the loss after her account was debited by using an ATM card at four different terminals. She said the transactions were unauthorized as not been made by her and the ATM Card was throughout in her possession. She also reported that no SMS alerts about the withdrawal of funds were conveyed to her except one received on 24-01-2019 intimating the withdrawal of Rs 200,000 from her account.
On receiving the SMS, she lodged a complaint with the bank, however, she was not provided with any relief. Subsequently, she approached the Banking Mohtasib to get a refund of Rs800,000 withdrawn from her account fraudulently.
The Banking Mohtasib in its decision observed that additional contact numbers of the complainant had been added in the bank’s record without any authorization from the account holder, therefore, SMS regarding cash withdrawal transactions could not be received by the complainant. Moreover, the bank had changed her PIN Code on 21.01.2019, just three days before the transactions, after receiving a phone call from an imposter as the Phone Banking Officer did not probe the caller. The bank admitted during the hearing that the voice of the caller was different from the voice of the lady complainant.
Additionally, the legible CCTV footage and snapshots of disputed transactions with date and time were not visible as the bank was found negligent to implement the State Bank of Pakistan’s guidelines regarding the installation of cameras in ATM cabins to have secondary evidence and to monitor all activities in the ATM vicinity.
