Victims of Internet banking fraud are increasingly fighting their banks in court, notes a BusinessLIVE report which says they’re demanding access to key information to determine who is liable for losses from defrauded accounts. Cape Town businessman and Absa client Johan Holtzhauzen, who was defrauded of R1.6m after his wife’s paid-up bond account and his business accounts were plundered this year, is one of the latest victims to have brought an application for a court order in the Western Cape High Court to compel Absa to give him pertinent information.

Johan Victor, who is representing Holtzhauzen and his companies, says he’s hoping that Holtzhauzen’s case will be precedent-setting on the issue of liability when money is stolen by Internet banking fraud. He is also arguing that the onus is on the bank to make sure that when it acts on an instruction, the instruction was from you, its client.

Victor is representing about 70 victims of Internet banking fraud, all of them Absa and Standard Bank clients.

In the bank’s answering affidavit to Holtzhauzen's application, Absa’s attorney Roxanne Francis-Pope says: ‘While the bank can control and protect the online banking platform and can seek to influence and educate its clients, it cannot control the manner in which its clients conduct themselves in protecting their pins and passwords. It also cannot control the manner in which clients deal with their own information technology systems and devices, in particular whether they do so in a manner that means the clients’ systems ... are rendered vulnerable to fraudsters.’

Full BusinessLIVE report