Weeks After UK Money Laundering Fine, GTBank Under Probe For Allegedly Breaching Customer’s Data

Not fewer than a few weeks after being sanctioned by UK authorities for abetting money laundering, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank) has allegedly subjected client data to be compromised.

BrandNewsDay reports that the Nigerian Data Protection Bureau (NDPB) is looking into all GTBank branches for alleged involvement in the illegal sharing of banking details to a third party.

Additionally, it was revealed that GTBank, under the direction of its managing director, Miriam Olusanya, is accused of improperly accessing and processing personal data.

This information was provided in a statement by Babatunde Bamigboye, Director of Legal Enforcement and Regulations at the NDPB, as quoted by NAN on Monday.

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Also, the data protection bureau will investigate one other commercial bank and branches under the financial institution for similar allegations of breaching customers’ data.

The statement stated that the data protection bureau will also look into all third parties participating in the data processing activities, albeit the investigation’s timeline was not provided.

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has shut down several digital lending apps and shark loans for stealing Nigerians’ personal information.

Loan applications like Soko Loan, GoCash, Okash, and EasyCredit, among others, have been accused of processing client data and extorting money out of their users.

NPDB is concerned about data protection failure among banks.

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In the statement released by NDPB, the National Commissioner of the bureau, Vincent Olatunji, stated, “The bureau notes with concern that many data privacy and protection regulations and best practices are hardly implemented down to the organisational strata of major data controllers in Nigeria.

“Similarly, the bureau enjoins organisations to heed the federal government circulars and general compliance notice directing them to send the names of their data protection officers/contacts to the bureau.

“There are reports by the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) which indicated that within nine months of 2020, fraudsters attempted 46,126 attacks and they were successful with 41,979 occasions representing 91 per cent of the time.

“This level of vulnerability to a data breach is unacceptable,” Olatunji said.