NAIROBI, Kenya
Safaricom has sacked 33 employees in the past one year over fraud. The mobile telecoms company said it detected cases of economic crime, including accounting fraud, asset misappropriation and bribery in the past year, which led to the sacking and prosecution of 28 workers, the Business Daily reports.
Safaricom sent home 70 employees while 16 workers were prosecuted the previous year. The fraudulent dealings are contained in Safaricom’s just-released sustainability report, which highlights the firm’s economic, environmental, social and governance performance.
Safaricom becomes one of the few companies in corporate Kenya to unveil its fraud statistics in a market where firms, according PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), prefer to remain silent over economic crimes fearing a public relations backlash and brand damage. Bob Collymore, the CEO of Safaricom, reckons that the report is about transparency and the quest to boost the firm’s internal processes and engagement with its stakeholders like suppliers and business partners.
“The report signifies that we are tough on internal corruption and fraud,” said Mr Collymore. “We are committed to ensuring that ethics and integrity underpin day-to-day business practices at Safaricom. We have constituted an ethics committee to inform and drive this agenda.”
The firm earlier said that a significant number of the fraudulent cases involved collusion and bribery between its workers and agents. Last year, Safaricom was locked in a court battle where it lost nearly Sh100 million in a fraudulent banking scheme hatched and executed by its agents. It sued 13 former agents for obtaining goods worth millions using banking slips that were later found to have been forged.
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