- BoG Fraud Report: Why Were Only 34% of Implicated Staff Dismissed?
The Bank of Ghana’s 2025 Fraud Report tells two stories about Ghana’s financial sector. The first is encouraging: fraud cases in banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions declined sharply. The second is more uncomfortable: many staff members implicated in fraud did not lose their jobs. That second story may matter just as much as the first.
According to the report, the number of staff involved in fraudulent activities across banks and SDIs fell from 365 in 2024 to 219 in 2025, representing a decline of 40.00%. On the face of it, this suggests progress. Fewer employees were linked to fraud, and the industry appears to be tightening controls.
But the same report shows that out of the 219 staff involved in fraudulent activities in 2025, only 75 were dismissed. That means only 34.00% of implicated staff lost their jobs.
This raises a difficult question for the financial sector: what happened to the remaining 144 staff?
Were they cleared after internal investigations? Were some suspended but later reinstated? Did some resign before disciplinary action was completed? Were cases still under investigation at the time of reporting? Or are banks and SDIs applying uneven standards when dealing with staff-related fraud?
The report does not provide those answers. But the gap is large enough to demand scrutiny. Fraud in financial institutions is not just a matter of money lost. It is also a matter of trust. Banks and SDIs are built on public confidence. Customers deposit funds because they believe institutions have systems strong enough to protect their money and ethical cultures strong enough to punish abuse.
When staff are implicated in fraud but only one in three are dismissed, the public may reasonably ask whether accountability is keeping pace with detection.
The issue is especially sensitive because staff-related fraud often involves privileged access. Unlike external fraudsters, employees may understand internal processes, customer behaviour, approval weaknesses, cash handling routines, system loopholes and documentation requirements. That makes insider fraud particularly dangerous.
The Bank of Ghana’s report shows that cash theft and cash suppression remain a major part of staff-related fraud. Out of the 219 staff-related fraud cases recorded in 2025, 139 were involved in cash theft and cash suppression. This represented 63.00% of all staff-related fraud cases.
That means the majority of staff-linked cases were not abstract cyber incidents or technical errors. They involved the handling, withholding or diversion of cash.
The pattern is even more revealing when the value at risk is considered. The report states that out of the 139 cash suppression cases recorded across banks and SDIs, only 22.00% occurred in banks. Yet banks accounted for approximately GH¢40.7 million, representing 96.00% of the total value at risk for cash suppression.
This suggests that while SDIs may have recorded more of the cash suppression cases, the biggest financial exposure came from banks.
The report further notes that cash suppression accounted for the highest value at risk in banks in 2025, totalling GH¢40.7 million. This represented an 18-fold increase from GH¢2.3 million in 2024. The jump was largely driven by one outlier situation involving GH¢36 million.
That single outlier should worry boards, auditors and regulators. It shows that even when the number of fraud cases declines, one major internal control failure can erase much of the comfort that comes from improved headline numbers. A bank may report fewer fraud incidents and still be exposed to one large event that damages confidence.
This is why the dismissal gap matters. When staff are implicated in fraud, the sector must show that consequences are clear, fair and credible. Dismissal should not be automatic in every case. Natural justice matters. Some allegations may not be proven. Some staff may be wrongly accused. Some cases may involve negligence rather than deliberate theft. Institutions must investigate properly.
But where fraud is established, weak sanctions create a dangerous signal. If employees believe that involvement in fraud may lead only to reassignment, quiet resignation, delayed investigation or soft disciplinary action, deterrence weakens. The cost of wrongdoing becomes uncertain. That is dangerous in a sector where trust is the main currency.
The report shows that banks and SDIs collectively dismissed 75 staff members in 2025 for various reasons, down from 155 dismissals in 2024. This represents a 52.00% reduction in dismissals. Out of the 75 dismissals in 2025, 44 cases, or 59.00%, were linked to cash theft-related fraud.
The fall in dismissals could be interpreted in two ways. The positive reading is that fewer staff were involved in fraud, so fewer dismissals were necessary. The less comfortable reading is that disciplinary action did not match the scale of staff implication.
The truth may lie somewhere between the two. But without fuller disclosure, the public is left with questions.
Financial institutions may argue that “staff involved” does not always mean “staff guilty”. That is fair. An employee may be mentioned in an incident report because they processed a transaction, failed to follow a procedure or worked in a unit where fraud occurred. Internal investigations may later determine that some did not act dishonestly.
Still, that explanation must be supported by stronger reporting. The Bank of Ghana and financial institutions should consider providing more detailed breakdowns in future fraud reports. These could include the number of staff dismissed, suspended, cleared, prosecuted, allowed to resign, referred to law enforcement or still under investigation.
Such detail would not only improve transparency. It would also help the public understand whether institutions are enforcing accountability or simply recording incidents.
The concern is not theoretical. Ghana’s financial sector has spent years rebuilding confidence after banking sector clean-up costs, insolvencies, corporate governance failures and concerns about weak risk culture. Customers still remember what happens when poor supervision, insider abuse and weak accountability are allowed to grow.
Fraud may be smaller in scale than institutional collapse, but it attacks the same foundation: trust.
If customers believe that staff who mishandle or steal funds are not punished decisively, confidence suffers. If honest employees believe dishonest colleagues escape with limited consequences, internal morale suffers. If fraudsters believe institutions prefer quiet settlements to prosecution, deterrence suffers.
The banking sector’s improved fraud numbers are therefore welcome, but they should not be used to avoid harder questions.
Banks reported 472 fraud cases in 2025, down from 716 in 2024, a decline of 34.00%. Their total value at risk also fell from GH¢75 million to GH¢57 million, a reduction of 24.00%. These are positive indicators.
SDIs also recorded fewer cases, with fraud incidents declining from 344 to 182, a reduction of 47.00%. But SDIs saw their value at risk increase by 77.00%, from GH¢4.5 million to GH¢8 million, largely reflecting high-value exposures in areas such as forgery and manipulation of documents.
The broader picture is therefore mixed. The number of cases is falling in banks and SDIs, but specific fraud types remain costly. Staff involvement is declining, but disciplinary outcomes are not fully clear. Cash suppression remains a serious risk, especially where one large case can distort the entire sector’s fraud profile.
This calls for stronger board-level attention. Fraud should not be treated only as an operational risk handled by internal audit and compliance departments. It is a governance issue. Boards must ask whether institutions have adequate segregation of duties, real-time cash monitoring, surprise audits, whistleblower protections, staff rotation policies and clear consequences for misconduct.
Regulators must also ask whether repeated fraud patterns are being met with stronger supervisory action. If a particular institution repeatedly reports staff-related fraud, the issue should not end with internal sanctions. It should trigger deeper examination of culture, controls and management accountability.
Law enforcement also has a role. Dismissal alone is not enough where criminal conduct is established. Staff involved in theft, cash suppression, document manipulation or fraudulent withdrawals should face prosecution where evidence supports it. Otherwise, dismissal may simply move the risk from one institution to another.
The public also deserves reassurance that implicated staff are not quietly recycled across the financial sector.
Ghana may need a stronger industry-wide mechanism to track employees dismissed for proven fraud, subject to data protection, labour law and due process safeguards. Without such a system, a dismissed staff member from one institution could potentially reappear in another, carrying the same risk into a new workplace.
The Bank of Ghana concludes in the report that fighting fraud requires a unified and sustained effort from financial institutions, law enforcement agencies, regulatory bodies and the public. It warns that as digitalisation and innovation deepen, fraud risks will continue to evolve, making vigilance and stronger controls necessary.
That conclusion is right. But vigilance must include accountability. The 2025 Fraud Report shows progress. Fewer bank and SDI staff were implicated in fraud. Fraud cases in banks declined. Fraud cases in SDIs declined. These are important gains.
But the report also leaves Ghana’s financial sector with an uncomfortable question: if 219 staff were implicated in fraudulent activities, why were only 75 dismissed?
Until that question is answered more clearly, the sector’s fraud story will remain incomplete.
Because in banking, detecting fraud is only the first test. What institutions do after detecting it is the real measure of trust.
