The Employment and Labour Relations Court has upheld NCBA Bank’s decision to dismiss an assistant operations officer accused of involvement in suspicious banking activities, including unauthorised access to customer accounts, engagement with suspected fraudsters, and receiving irregular benefits.
In its ruling, the court emphasised that banking institutions are entitled to enforce high standards of integrity and may rely on digital evidence such as transaction logs, account access records, and CCTV timelines when handling fraud-related disciplinary cases.
The court concluded that the dismissal of Simon Kamande in 2017 was lawful and conducted through a fair disciplinary process.
The case arose from internal fraud investigations at the former Commercial Bank of Africa, now part of NCBA, where Kamande served as an operations assistant at the Mama Ngina Street branch.
The investigations began after the bank detected a suspicious email in December 2016 instructing the transfer of Sh890,000 from a customer’s account. Concerns were raised when a bank employee noticed the email address used differed from the customer’s officially registered contact information.
After the customer denied authorising the transaction, the matter was escalated to the bank’s security team for further investigation.
According to court documents, the inquiry uncovered several questionable transactions involving multiple customer accounts.
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Investigators established that Kamande had accessed customer accounts without instruction and during unusual hours. System records showed he reviewed account details, balances, and signing mandates using customer identification numbers even when no clients were physically present at his workstation.
In one cited incident, he accessed a customer’s account at around 5:22 pm, after banking hours, at a time when CCTV footage reportedly showed the banking hall lights switched off and Kamande alone at the customer service desk.
The bank argued that his system activity linked him to transactions later identified as fraudulent, a position the court ultimately accepted.
The judge held that the employee’s conduct violated internal banking procedures and fundamentally undermined the trust expected within the financial sector.
Kamande’s claim that he had been unfairly targeted on the basis of gender was dismissed after the court found no evidence supporting allegations of discrimination.
He had also challenged the withholding of certain employment benefits and aspects of his certificate of service, but the court declined to overturn the bank’s decisions.
