Kenya’s central bank on Wednesday said it had fined five commercial banks a total of 392.5 million shillings ($3.89 million) in connection with the theft of funds at the National Youth Agency, a government body said.
Dozens of senior government officials and business people were charged in May with various charges related to the theft of nearly $100 million from the youth agency, NYS, marking a new effort to crack down on widespread graft.
The five banks are Standard Chartered Kenya, Equity, Diamond Trust, Co-operative Bank and KCB Group, the central bank said.
The central bank said it had discussed its findings with all the five banks and they had pledged to ensure compliance with all laws in the future and to draw up plans for sealing gaps that were identified.
It accused them of failing to report large transactions, failing to undertake proper due diligence on customers, approving large transactions without proper documents and failing to report suspicious transactions.
All the banks had received a total of more than 3 billion shillings from the NYS on behalf of their customers, the central bank said.
It said the findings of its investigations had been passed onto criminal detectives to assess whether they would bring any charges. More banks will also be investigated, the central bank added.
