Morocco: The banker was directly withdrawing from customers’ accounts

The verdict was handed down this Monday, March 9, before the Criminal Chamber in charge of financial offenses at the Court of Appeal of Rabat. A bank employee, working in a public agency in Kenitra, was found guilty of massive misappropriation of funds. In addition to the prison sentence, the man will have to pay a fine of 10,000 dirhams.

The alert was raised by the management of the institution after the discovery of major irregularities in the management of the cash register, coinciding with the sudden disappearance of the manager. According to the daily Al Akhbar, an inspection by the general commission of the central bank confirmed the financial irregularities, prompting the prosecution to order the immediate intervention of the judicial police.

The investigations focused on the analysis of computer transactions. The investigators established that the accused validated fraudulent deposit and withdrawal operations using his personal identifiers. The confrontation with his own bank statements, abnormally funded, as well as suspicious recent transfers, finally cornered the suspect during his interrogation.

However, the decisive element of the investigation remains visual: the surveillance recordings filmed the employee leaving the establishment with a cash box containing the embezzled amount. While a search of his home allowed the seizure of one million dirhams in cash, the defendant admitted to having already spent the remaining 500,000 dirhams before his arrest.