KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 3 — Putrajaya is studying to strengthen the mechanism making banks liable for negligence in scam cases, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim told Parliament today.
The prime minister agreed that Malaysia should also adopt the United Kingdom’s (UK) principle in providing compensation to fraud victims, provided that banks were found to be negligent.
“In a study chaired by the Treasury’s chief secretary, we will also study tightening (the mechanism) making banks liable if found to be not careful in monitoring and ensuring rules were followed,” Anwar said in response to Nurul Amin Hamid’s (PN-Padang Terap) supplementary question.
Under new rules in the UK, banks must refund fraud victims up to £85,000 (RM480,600) within five days.
Under Malaysian law, banks will return the money to the victim if negligence has been established as stipulated in Section 413 of the Criminal Procedure Code (CPC), he said.
Section 413 of the CPC may be used for police officers to seize property linked to an offence and to return it to the person entitled to such property.
“As of now, according to Section 413 of the CPC, RM178,407 has been returned,” he said.
Losses from online financial crimes in Malaysia had reached RM1.224 billion from January to October this year. The number comprises online scams, telecommunication crimes, love scams, inexistent loans and investments, among others.
The “Semak Mule” website has recorded 181,628 phone numbers, 222,092 bank accounts and 1,395 companies linked to online scams.
To date, over 32 million searches have been made and about two-thirds of the searches (22,200,984) recorded positive results.
“This means there were efforts made to transfer their money into mule accounts but many were saved, because we use the Semak Mule portal,” the prime minister said.
