Bank's excuse not to refund a scam victim of its former employee in full is most ridiculous, Chong claims

KUCHING, March 11 2026: Stampin MP Chong Chieng Jen said he finds it most ridiculous for a bank not to refund a customer, a scam victim of its former employee, in full.

Caption: Stampin MP Chong Chieng Jen says Ms Jee seek his assistance to claim full refund from the bank

He said it cannot be over-emphasised that it is the bank’s legal obligation to reimburse its customers for the fraud committed by its officers in the course of the bank’s business.

He said the bank’s business is independent from and unrelated to the source of fund of the customers.  

“Even if the source of fund is suspicious, it is the task of the police to investigate the depositors on their source of fund and not for the bank to claim suspicious source of fund as a reason to exonerate it from its legal obligation to reimburse the victims of the fraud committed by its officers,” Chong, who is also Sarawak DAP chairman, said in a statement.

He urged the bank not to further penalise the victims of its employee’s fraud by refusing to refund them their money on such unjustifiable ground.

He said a customer, whom he identified as Ms Jee, came to seek assistance from him to recover her loss when the bank only refunded her RM10,000 out of the RM15,000 she invested in the bank’s investment.

“Sometime in June, 2025, Ms. Jee invested RM25,000 with the bank’s then employee (now terminated) at its branch at Jalan Tun Jugah where she handed over cash of RM25,000 to the former employee who then issued an investment receipt acknowledging the receipt of the RM25,0000.  

“When the investment scandal was exposed by me in early December last year, she  proceeded to enquire and found out that the whole of her RM25,000 investment money was misappropriated by the same employee.

“She then proceeded to claim for the refund of her misappropriated RM25,000.

“Last month, the bank only refunded her RM10,000, claiming that the remaining RM15,000 was suspicious source of fund because she did not show any record of cash withdrawal of the said RM15,000 from any bank account,” Chong said.

Chong explained that the RM15,000 came from Ms Jee’s small small sundry shop business in the outskirt of Kuching and most of her customers pay her in cash.  

“It is thus not uncommon for her to have in her possession cash money in that amount,” he said.

He claimed that the bank has arbitrarily and unfairly imposed upon its customers that in order to qualify for non-suspicious source of fund to be entitled to the refund, the victim must prove to its satisfaction that the money was withdrawn from a bank account within one month before the date the money was misappropriated.

“If the cash money was not withdrawn from a bank account within 30 days before the date of the misappropriation, then BSN would consider the money as “suspicious” and treated it as “illegal”, thus the bank will not refund the money thus misappropriated.

“Such excuse by the bank to deny refund to the scam victims is most ridiculous,”he said.