First City Monument Bank (FCMB) is currently battling a repudiation crisis following reports claiming it has ordered its staff to target accounts owned by customers between the age of 18-30 for certain financial infractions.
The bank is said to have made the directive in furtherance of the recent ban on cryptocurrencies by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
On Wednesday, an internal memo titled “Compliance Advisory on Cryptocurrency Dealing/Transactions”, purportedly issued by FCMB went viral on the social media.
According to the memo in circulation, the bank ordered its staff to place accounts owned by individuals between age of 18-30 on high alerts, noting that the move was to make the bank safe from money launderers, criminals and terrorists, among others.
In the memo, the bank was quoted to have asked its staff to identify “accounts with high volume transactions operated by individuals between the age brackets of 18-30 years as signatories as well as accounts receiving high daily inflows from a huge number of multiple payers from all over the country.”
Also, the bank asked its staff to place accounts that engaged in “transactions involving the use of multiple accounts, with no logical business explanation”, on high alert.
The viral memo partly reads, “We wish to reiterate that the Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN) is strictly monitoring non-compliance with the directive on the closure of accounts involved in cryptocurrency for high regulatory sanction.
“In view of the above, all staff are hereby advised again to identify persons/entities transacting in or operating cryptocurrency exchanges within their systems and ensure that such accounts are closed immediately.
“Any staff member who willfully does not disclose an account used for cryptocurrency transactions, in order to enable such account to be closed will be sanctioned in line with the provisions of the bank’s sanctions grid.”
It however remains unclear how the internal memo made it to the public space as efforts to reach authorities at the bank for comments were yet to materialise as of press time.
But the spokesman for the CBN, Mr Osita Nwanisobi, while speaking with the journalists reportedly said the apex bank didn’t order any bank to enforce the ban on cryptocurrencies on the basis of age or other forms of discrimination.
Meanwhile, the viral memo has been generating a deluge of reactions from Nigerians on social media amid reports that many young FCMB customers have been closing their accounts in retaliation.
Here are some of the views; “See, I’m Tweeting from position of pain as a Young Nigerian entrepreneur. This 2021, it was fight against the youth. International fintech got banned e.g Transferwise for absolute no good reason, crypto and Twitter followed. FCMB now works for CBN, they simply don’t fear us & it’s very telling. When Twitter got banned, the network provider cut us off and filter access without informing us in any way whatsoever. It’s because they believed there’s nothing we can do.”(@agbaakin)
“If you have an FCMB account, please go ahead and close the account. FCMB has started treating it’s client from 18-30 age as fraudsters,”(@PJadelani)
“Honestly, I am losing my mind. If we don’t stop this whole mess from these tyrants, it might get out of hand. FCMB Closed down my account. And the question is, what happens to these sycophants who loot billions on the daily.”(@coachRawpill)
“FCMB has put out an alert on accounts held by people between the ages of 18-30, asking staff to be on the lookout for money launderers and other criminal activities. Dear FCMB & CBN, so it’s now young people who are money launderers? Not politicians stealing our commonwealth?,” (@tosinolugbenga)
