UAE banks launch new initiative to stop fake documents

Banks in UAE have launched a new network to verify documents to prevent financial fraud.

Jamal Saleh, director general of UAE Banks Federation, said they have come up with a new initiative to stop fake documents and they have been successful in catching a few of them.

“We have created a network to verify whether documents are genuine or not. If you catch one, and few caught a few, you avoided making payment for the whole import of whole cargo which is tens of millions. There is always a new way of fraud,” he said.

There have been a few instances of documents being faked to sell properties, scam companies and others.

While speaking during the 2023 Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) Fraud Conference Middle East, Saleh added that they always work in cooperation with the UAE Central Bank, which is extremely active in terms of legislation to deal with such challenges. Last year alone, he said, Central Bank issued 83 regulations, reflecting the regulator is very active and ready to deal with any issue.

He stressed that awareness and education of consumers are very important to deal with fraud

“People being wary of caller, message or email is equal to all the efforts being done by others… I don’t think frauds can be stopped permanently, but they can be reduced,” he said, adding that the Federation works with the law-enforcement authorities to solve the issues of the customers.

“One key problem is how to make sure that people become aware enough of what is good and what is not. That will continue to be the number one challenge,” he said.

Jamal Saleh added that if people use their accounts wisely, there would be no room that their accounts to be compromised.

Mariam Al Amir, assistant undersecretary for General financial management, Ministry of Finance, said that to protect economies against cyber frauds, the most important is to spread awareness to tackle these challenges.

“We want to make our region safer so we need to cooperate to make it more secure and stable. The UAE’s efforts were pioneering in this regard,” she said while giving opening remarks on the first day of the two-day summit.

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