Fairness Group expands fraud crackdown to Uganda after firing 1,500 in Kenya

Fairness Group, Kenya’s second-largest financial institution by property, has prolonged its inside crackdown on employees misconduct to Uganda, two months after sacking over 1,500 workers in Kenya over hyperlinks to suspect dealings, together with fraud.

In Uganda, the financial institution has launched what it’s calling a “tradition of accountability” marketing campaign, a group-wide push to tighten inside controls, promote moral behaviour, and weed out conflicts of curiosity. Fairness Financial institution Uganda Managing Director Reward Shoko advised Every day Monitor that the train isn’t a response to any single incident, however moderately a part of the lender’s plans to strengthen governance throughout its operations.

“We’re doing common audits, reviewing efficiency, and looking out intently at battle of curiosity and fraud threat,” Shoko mentioned. “It’s not about punishing folks, however about supporting them and setting clear expectations. However the place belief is damaged, we’ll take applicable motion.”

Shoko mentioned the financial institution is rolling out new whistleblower protections, ethics coaching, and back-end threat checks, together with AI-powered analytics that flag uncommon transactions. “We’re each disbursement and the place it was deposited. What we noticed in Kenya was a shock. And we wish to be clear.”

That “shock” refers back to the financial institution’s sweeping anti-fraud purge in Kenya, the place an inside investigation uncovered widespread collusion between employees and fraudsters. Greater than $15 million is estimated to have been misplaced in questionable transactions over the previous two years, a few of it wired to offshore accounts.

Fairness Group CEO James Mwangi mentioned some workers had been dismissed over hyperlinks to suspicious M-PESA and financial institution transactions, even the place the quantities had been small.

“This isn’t a toll station,” Mwangi mentioned in Might. “If in case you have ever eaten Mama Mboga’s rooster, the second has come.”

The clean-up started in Might and has since develop into some of the aggressive anti-fraud campaigns in Kenya’s banking historical past. Mwangi has vowed to take the train throughout all seven of Fairness’s markets, which embody Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and the DRC.

Shoko mentioned Uganda is now going via the identical course of, backed by exterior auditors and authorized groups. “All affected employees are being given a good probability to elucidate themselves. Some have, others haven’t—and disciplinary processes are underway,” he mentioned.

He added that the train is predicted to wrap up by the top of July.

As soon as a small constructing society in Kenya, Fairness has grown into one in all Africa’s greatest banks with $1.3 billion (KES180 billion) capitalisation, primarily providing reasonably priced providers to low-income clients. However with that progress—and a speedy shift to digital banking—has come new vulnerabilities, particularly in inside programs and employees behaviour.

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