The Chairman of Barclays Bank Botswana has said no executives have been suspended at the Bank.
Rizwan Desai was responding to a report aired Friday night by Botswana Television that Barclays Bank Botswana had suspended some senior staff members over allegations of wrong doing.
“We would like to state that no employees have been suspended from work in relation to these allegations,” said Desai in a written statement.
Desai said the situation at Barclays Bank Botswana remained “business as usual”.
In their report Friday night, state television, BTV, had insinuated that Barclays Bank Botswana Managing Director Tuli Johnson was among those suspended.
In a curious turn of events, the same clip which had run during a Setswana bulletin was pulled off when the English news bulletin ran later in the night.
“We are committed to business integrity and professionalism in all our activities and adhere to the highest standards of corporate governance,” continued Desai in his statement that was clearly in response to BTV.
It was, however, not immediately clear why BTV had to pull off an item that had already attracted national attention from their news content.
In a separate incident last week The Sunday Standard broke a story that Barclays Bank Board of Directors had instituted an investigation into allegations that a number of senior executives at the bank were involved in credit card fraud, among other wrongdoings.
Investigations had proved that the Group’s Regional Human Resources Director was leading an internal forensic investigation, which, among other things sought to go to the bottom of allegations of credit card misuse and abuse by some senior executives.
A report is expected in two weeks time.
“As a matter of policy, Barclays cannot and will not comment on such allegations,” the Head of Corporate affairs, Esther Norris, said at the time.
Forensic investigations followed a tip-off from a whistle blower from inside the Group.
