‘BSN not among banks that made multiple BR1M payouts’

PETALING JAYA: Bank Simpanan Nasional (BSN) has clarified that it was not among those banks that had made multiple payments to some recipients of the 1Malaysia People’s Aid (BR1M).

In the 2014 Auditor-General’s Report, it was pointed out that some recipients were paid more than once due to an absence of real-time links between various banks and the BR1M database to identify individuals who had already been paid.

“BSN wishes to highlight that this occurred due to the absence of links between banks, which will enable the updating of payment records to a common database on a real-time basis,” said BSN deputy chief exeuctive for retail banking Datuk Yunos Abd Ghani in a statement yesterday.

He stressed that BSN only paid BR1M recipients once, and that “the other payments made by different banks resulted in multiple payments to the same recipients”.

The Auditor-General reported that over 6,000 Malaysians have abused BR1M by making fraudulent claims for the cash aid that cost the Government more than RM3mil between 2012 and 2014.

Some fraudsters had been found to have made up to four overlapping claims during each BR1M payout.

According to BSN, it had implemented an online and real-time system to manage BR1M payments since it began assisting the Government in channelling the money to ease the burden of the low income group.

“Verification of recipients’ identity was done through biometric and MyKad authentication. With all these processes in place it is totally impossible for BSN to concede double claims.

“Payments were only made after clearance had been obtained online and payment records updated within seconds,” said Yunos, who added that the practice of updating the common database on a weekly basis had created a window of opportunity for unscrupulous recipients to make repeat claims.

“As far as BSN is concerned, all payments had been made using genuine serialised vouchers with security features in place.”

More information can be obtained by calling BSN at 1300 88 1900 or visiting www.mybsn.com.my.