Companies

Safaricom sacks 43 employees over fraud, steps up risk assessment

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A Safaricom shop on Kimathi Street, Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NMG

Safaricom sacked 43 employees in the year to March 2018 for fraud related incidents, a drop from the 52 who were dismissed for similar offences in the previous year.

The company made the disclosure in its 2018 sustainability report, saying that it investigated a total of 57 cases of corruption and fraud during the period, up from 33 the previous year.

The company, one of the few that disclose in detail the number of fraud related dismissals made each year, also issued 10 disciplinary warnings to staff.

“While it is difficult to accept any number of disciplinary actions and dismissals, we are satisfied with our ability to detect and investigate unethical behaviour. Regrettably, we recognise that it is unlikely a business the size of ours will ever be free from fraud entirely and that the better we get at detecting it, the more effectively it is concealed,” says Safaricom in the report.

This year, the company added, it will conduct risk assessments at the departmental level, rather than divisional level as was the case last year, which will triple the number of assessments conducted within the year.

Although the firm did not specify the type of offences leading to each dismissal, some of the more common cases of fraud in the company in recent years have tended to involve theft, asset misappropriation and unauthorised access to data systems.

Others have been involved in fraudulent SIM card swaps and breach of rules governing money transfer service M-Pesa.