“We did not steal alone” 28 Arrested NEDBANK Tellers Implicate Management In Forex Scam

Nedbank Zimbabwe bank tellers who were arrested last week on allegations of defrauding Nedbank of USD $1.1 million are accusing the management of the bank for being behind the scam.

A leaked audio recording of a meeting apparently held yesterday by the tellers contains details of how the management turned a blind eye and also actively participated in defrauding the bank of US dollars against Bond Note deposits.

Said one bank teller in the meeting:

Whenever the executives, especially at those branches which they were frequenting, whether they were withdrawing from their RTGS account or from their Nostro, they’d always maintain or demand to withdraw that in USD.

So we don’t know what triggered this but our suspicion is that it started there on top because we started to hear these stories sometime back. We never knew that it was going to be thrown wholesomely on us and probably we are the easiest target for them to just pounce on.

Another teller said that there was a policy at the bank that bank staff could get their salaries in USD even though they had Bond Note accounts. Said the teller:

You would have noticed that as staff we had a privilege of being given 100% of my salary once off per year in USDs. If I applied for an overdraft, I was given USDs but it was coming from the Bond account – it was 1:1.

In addition to that, I think my colleague will support me – staff withdrawals authorised by one of the executives. He’d just send an email [saying]  “Pay”. And usually $800 to $1,000 US Dollars. We had no Nostro account. These were Bond accounts. That’s how we could facilitate withdrawals…. And we wonder now why fall heavy on us.

Nedbank executives, said one teller, would go to some branches and demand to withdraw US dollars against their Bond Note accounts…PINDULA