Banks Lose N25b to Fraud in Five Years, Says CIFIAN

• Banks Lose N25b to Fraud in Five Years, Says CIFIAN

Banks in Nigeria may have lost about N25 billion to fraudulent activities in the last five years, the Chartered Institute of Forensic Investigative Auditors of Nigeria (CIFIAN) has revealed.

The body lamented that recorded volume of fraud in the banks increased in the last five years due to the lack of appropriate fraud prevention mechanism, which has led to scandalous collapses, financial losses, lay-offs, among others.

Pro tem president of CIFIAN, Dr. (Mrs.) Victoria Enape, disclosed this at an intensive training for CIFIAN members with the theme, ‘The use of Forensic and Investigative Auditing for Prevention of fraud, Corruption and Cyber Crimes in Nigeria’.

According to her, countries that have poor or no fraud prevention in place cannot experience economic growth, as the manifestation of the evil undermines democracy and the rule of law, distorts markets, emasculates government’s efforts in providing basic infrastructure and allows organised crimes, terrorism and other threats to human security to flourish.

She lamented that government agencies and multinationals had to spend scarce foreign resources to retain expatriate forensic and investigative auditors to unravel complex cases of fraud in the country when smaller countries like Zimbabwe and South Africa already have forensic and investigative auditors.

Enape pointed out that, globally, there had being heightened interest in institutionalising forensic and investigative auditing as a result of recent corporate scandals because of insidious and invidious accounting practices and lack of investigative auditors to prevent, detect and unravel manipulation of figures.

She lamented that public service and those entrusted with public funds for the provision of citizens’ welfare, security and those assigned the responsibility of public oversight, transparency and accountability in governance had allegedly been implicated by corruption.

The aim of CIFIAN is to create an instrumental professional paradigm shift in the systemic fight against fraud, corruption and cyber crimes, she disclosed, adding that CIFIAN is professionally distinct from other accounting bodies.