KUALA LUMPUR: Banks are fully responsible for the loss of depositors money due to fraud if the incident arises from weaknesses within the financial institution itself.
Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister's Department (Law and Institutional Reform) M. Kulasegaran said this is in line with Bank Negara Malaysia's (BNM) role in strengthening consumer protection.
He said BNM also requires financial institutions to conduct thorough and transparent investigations into every case of financial fraud that occurs.
The Ipoh Barat member of Parliament said these actions are part of the government's measures to address the growing concern of financial fraud.
"Various actions have already been taken (to tackle financial fraud), but ultimately (it also involves the responsibility) of the account holders themselves.
"If they are deceived and fail to verify the transaction, this is a major issue. They also cannot be too easily fooled by online notifications and so on," he said in the Dewan Rakyat today.
He was responding to a supplementary question from Mohd Hasnizan Harun (PN-Hulu Selangor) regarding the involvement of financial institutions in enhancing controls and mechanisms for early detection of suspicious transactions, in order to prevent the flow of funds from fraud victims into the scammers' accounts.
Meanwhile, Kulasegaran said the National Scam Response Centre received a total of 131,036 calls, including 52,836 related to fraud cases and 78,200 calls for advice between Oct 12 2022 and September 2023.
He also said the police have opened 15,106 investigation papers for fraud offences under Section 420 of the Penal Code.
Another 77 investigation papers, he said, were related to money laundering, involving the freezing of accounts with a value of RM75.35 million.
"The Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) has also blocked phone numbers used by scammers, with 131 lines terminated for involvement in fraudulent activities between Oct 14, 2022 and last October.
"112 suspicious numbers were also blocked during the same period, and MCMC has collaborated with telecommunications companies for this purpose," he added.
In response to an additional question from Onn Abu Bakar (PH-Batu Pahat), Kulasegaran said the government is prepared to consider proposals to bring the issue of online crime, or scams, to the Asean Summit next year.
"There have been previous discussions on this, and it will be continued so that the goal of eradicating it can be achieved, as this issue is not specific to Malaysia but involves the whole world (related to online crime)," he said when commenting on the suggestion to introduce a policy related to scams during Malaysia's chairmanship of Asean next year.