Moroccan Bank Director Sentenced for Embezzling Client Funds to Wife’s Accounts

Eighteen months in prison with the payment of a fine of 5,000 dirhams and 450,000 dirhams in damages to the benefit of the bank. This is the sentence imposed by the Court of Appeal of Rabat on the director of a bank branch in Sala Al Jadida. The man was prosecuted in detention for breach of trust, influence peddling, financial embezzlement, fraud and forgery and use of forgery.

His modus operandi was to target the accounts of clients who are abroad in order to then withdraw certain amounts that he transfers to two accounts bearing the name of his wife, but which were created without her knowledge. He could then withdraw the transferred amounts by surreptitiously taking his wife’s ATM cards and checkbooks. In total, he would have carried out 26 illegal transfer operations, withdrawing significant sums of money from clients’ accounts, reports the daily Assabah.

The case came to light following a complaint filed by the manager of a multinational oil company in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates who discovered unusual movements on her accounts domiciled in this bank branch in Sala Al Jadida. The bank authorities tried to settle the problem amicably but the defendant was unable to return the full amount stolen.

Such cases, the region has known several in recent times, recalls the same publication. A few weeks ago, it was the director of a bank branch in Sidi Yahya Zaër who proceeded in the same way by transferring significant sums of money withdrawn from the accounts of certain clients to the accounts of her husband. In another locality in the same region, it was an employee who was sentenced to three years in prison for having made illegal transfers to the account of his mistress.