Bank staffers secretly replace gold with 'fake gold' from lockers in Karachi

KARACHI: A unique financial fraud has been unearthed in Karachi as the staffers secretly replaced gold assets of citizens with ‘fake gold’ in the lockers, ARY News reported on Friday.

The revelations were made after the audit of a private bank’s branch in the Gulistan-e-Johar area of Karachi where the original gold assets of citizens to acquire loans were replaced with ‘fake gold’ by the bank staffers.

After the discovery, the management conducted the audit of one more suspected branch located in the Gulshan-e-Iqbal area that further exposed the plan of the defrauders.

It emerged that the bank staffers at Gulistan-e-Johar acquired a loan worth Rs24 million by giving gold assets as a guarantee for a fake customer. Alongside acquiring the loan, the staffers had secretly replaced the original gold with the fake gold.

The bank management later found fake gold worth Rs550 million from the lockers of its Gulistan-e-Johar branch. The gold stocks were reportedly placed inside the lockers by the citizens to acquire loans. It was learnt that the bank staff had changed original gold with fake gold from more than 150 bags.

In the Gulshan-e-Iqbal branch of the same bank, the management detected fake customers who had been awarded loans worth millions.

The gold scams have led the bank management to file two separate cases at Shah Faisal and Aziz Bhatti police stations in which the bank staffers were nominated in the financial scams. The nominated persons include five managers of operations, relationship, counter service, gold finance executive and fake customers.

In another development, police officials have arrested seven suspects including branch managers of both bank branches and recovered original gold worth Rs30 million from their homes.