Accra, Ghana MobileMoney Limited (MML), a subsidiary of MTN Ghana responsible for Mobile Financial Services, has begun training officials of the Economic and Organised Crime Office (EOCO) and other security agencies on mobile money (MoMo) fraud in the country.
The company has so far trained 180 officials of EOCO in a three-day workshop. 60 officials are trained each day. Hundreds of security personnel including the Ghana Police Service would be trained nationwide in participation with the e-Crime Bureau.
This follows MML’s recent signing of an agreement with the EOCO to fight the rising MoMo fraud cases in the country.
The one-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) which is subject to renewal seeks to build the capacity of the staff of EOCO and other security agencies to properly investigate MoMo fraud cases nationwide.
In his welcome address at the MoMo Fraud Capacity Building Training held at the MTN Ghana head office in Accra, Head of Legal and Corporate Affairs of MobileMoney Limited, Papa Osei said: “Our three-day intense training sessions started when we paid a courtesy call on our strategic partner, EOCO sometimes in March this year.
This was followed by the signing of the MoU on 25th of July 2023 under the able leadership of our CEO, Shaibu Haruna and together with Madam Tiwaa of EOCO”.
He added: “The idea is not to just stay ahead of economic and organised crime but to empower our security personnel with the requisite skills needed in fighting MoMo fraud and related activities” in the country.
Primary goal
“Our primary goal is to empower our security personnel and of course our stakeholders in respect of capacity building. That is what we are here to do today.
These training sessions will be held across the 16 regions of the country as we progress. So, MobileMoney Limited together with our able partners, e-Crime Bureau will deliver these sessions to the security personnel”.
They are well versed in cybersecurity, forensics, intelligence and investigations, money laundering, and fraud, among several others, Mr. Osei explained.
He noted that the company had listened to the call of its customers to do more as their customers daily fall victim to activities of the MoMo fraudsters who employ various methods to steal money from the wallets of unsuspected MoMo customers.
Mr Osei assured that “MobileMoney Limited will continue investing in our customers, we will continue investing our people and we continue collaborating with security agencies so we can just not only mitigate the losses victims suffer but to the extent of equipping them with the requisite knowledge needed to secure themselves when it comes to some of these issues”.
He therefore appealed to the participants to take these sessions very seriously to enable them to equip themselves and translate the knowledge they acquired into their day-to-day activities.
Core mandate
Speaking on behalf of EOCO, a lawyer at EOCO, Victoria Asamoah noted: “Our core mandate is to detect and prevent organised crime. We also prosecute on the authority of the Attorney General. Under our mandate Section 3, our Act empowers us to collaborate with other security agencies.
It also allows to collaborate with other institutions. For instance, MobileMoney Limited to curb organised crime, to curb crimes that are on the increase”.
We have realised that in recent times digital crime has been on the increase. So, collaborations like these help us as EOCO to be able to effectively execute our mandate. What we do is investigate these crimes in collaboration with our partners. for instance, MobileMoney Limited”.
The EOCO Act mandates it to sign the MoU with MobileMoney Limited and as part of that MoU, they (MobileMoney Limited) would provide EOCO with some technical knowhow, and capacity-building training so that they would know how to tackle these organised crimes and curb it, minimise it and if possible, eradicate some of these crimes that are on the rise in the country,
What data say
According to the Bank of Ghana’s (BoG’s) latest data collated from the three sectors (banks, Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions (SDIs) and Payment Service Providers (PSPs) indicate that the count of fraud cases recorded for 2022 was 15,164 and a total loss value of approximately GH¢82 million.
Concerning 2022, the top five fraud categories are Cash theft (cash suppression), Cyber/email, Fraudulent withdrawals, Impersonation and E-Money frauds, in descending order.
The data which was compiled by the Financial Stability Department of the BoG from 01 January– 31 December 2022 revealed that electronic money (E-money) recorded 149 cases in 2022, as compared to 116 cases recorded in 2021, an increase of 28.45% in year-on-year terms.
The training will better equip us
“This training will better equip us more to be able to understand the issues more, to be able to know how these fraudsters operate and the kind of sophisticated gadgets that they use and the kind of atmosphere in which they operate”.
Madam Asamoah continued: “It will better help EOCO investigators to understand more and then we can take our investigations better head on. So, now EOCO is fully armed, and the MoMo fraudsters and other criminals should watch out for us”.
Strict warning
She warned that “if anybody is involved in these vices, we are coming after them and we advise that if you have intentions of going into it, please back off. While those who are already into it, we are advising them to stop other than that we will come after them. We also have the mandate of confiscating proceeds of crime.
Even if you can get anything out of these MoMo fraudulent activities, EOCO has the mandate and the power under the authority of the Attorney General to come after any property at all that you make out of these crimes, according to her.
Madam Asamoah therefore urged the participants to “be attentive, learn everything being taught, let’s come back to the office and put them into practice”.
Lead, of Financial Crime and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) at e-Crime Bureau, Eric Kwaku Mensah thanked MobileMoney Limited for working tirelessly to reduce and stop MoMo fraud in the country.
He recalled that five years ago e-Crime Bureau had collaborated with the company to run a series of training programmes for the judiciary, media, and law enforcement agencies both within Accra and Kumasi.
Mr Mensah was confident that through these collaborative efforts, MoMo would become safer for all customers in the country.
MoMo transactions by numbers
Indeed, there is a growing usage of e-money among Ghanaians. The year 2022 recorded a value of GH¢1 trillion in e-money transactions and the volume of e-money transactions stood at 5 billion, according to the BoG’s recent report.
In 2021, the value of e-money transactions stood at GH¢ 978.32 billion while the volume of e-money transactions stood at 4.25 billion.
