KARACHI, May 5: The National Bank of Pakistan will train its officials and financial crime experts of the Federal Investigation Agency jointly to investigate frauds in electronic and cyber banking, said NBP chief Ali Raza on Monday during a meeting with FIA officials.

The meeting was held at the Commercial Banks Circle-1 (CBC) of the FIA.

“Bank fraud has become an ‘institution’ across the world and the entire system to check it needs to be improved,” he said.

He said at present there were around 150,000 credit card holders in the country and in the next five years it was expected to increase to 3-5 million.

He said online banking was bound to meet new challenges and “we have to identify weaknesses in our banking system.”

Mr Raza, who visited the offices of the CBC after the detection of a fraud, praised the performance of FIA’s financial crime experts and said the banks’ losses could have been much more if the gang of forgers had not been busted.

The gang of crooks, allegedly involved in defrauding banks of millions of rupees, used innocent job seekers for withdrawal of money through forged cheques. During interrogation, the forgers disclosed to have defrauded the NBP’s airport branch, income tax branch, the ABL’s foreign exchange branch, and the MCB’s Business Recorder, SITE and West Wharf branches.

Mr Raza said the meeting was aimed at identifying the areas which needed further coordination. He added that he had already ordered an inquiry against those bank officials who verified the fake signatures of the account holders on the forged cheques.

He said the bank was considering formally introducing a system of acknowledging the services of FIA investigators through cash rewards.

Later, the NBP chief gave commendation certificates to Inspector Khalid Jamil, Inspector Rasheed Shaikh, SI Shah Adeel and constable Arshad.

During his visit, the Director of Economic Crime Wing, Liaquat Chaudhry, also phoned the CBC offices and talked to the NBP chief.

Deputy director of the CBC S. M. Shujaat Ali brief the NBP chief on some of the massive bank frauds. He told him that the complaints of fraud being lodged by the banks needed much correction as they were apparently written by lawyers of civil side. He suggested that the banks hire the services of competent lawyers from criminal side.

The FIA official stated that fraud, forgery and misuse of authority by a bank official constituted a criminal offence and such matters should be reported to the CBC immediately for successful investigation and subsequent prosecution of the accused.

The deputy director drew the NBP chief’s attention to non-cooperation by the bank’s lawyers during prosecution of cases. He said legal help from the bank was in its own interest.

He pointed out that bank managers were referring bank fraud cases to the local police, who did not have the skill to investigate financial crimes. He requested the NBP chief to issue instructions to the bank managers in this connection.

Mr Raza is the first serving chief of a bank who visited the offices of the CBC to praise the workings of the FIA’s financial crime detectives.