Equity Group, Kenya’s second-largest bank by assets, has extended its internal crackdown on staff misconduct to Uganda, two months after sacking over 1,500 employees in Kenya over links to suspect dealings, including fraud.
In Uganda, the bank has launched what it’s calling a “culture of accountability” campaign, a group-wide push to tighten internal controls, promote ethical behaviour, and weed out conflicts of interest. Equity Bank Uganda Managing Director Gift Shoko told Daily Monitor that the exercise is not a reaction to any single incident, but rather part of the lender’s plans to strengthen governance across its operations.
“We’re doing regular audits, reviewing performance, and looking closely at conflict of interest and fraud risk,” Shoko said. “It’s not about punishing people, but about supporting them and setting clear expectations. But where trust is broken, we’ll take appropriate action.”
Shoko said the bank is rolling out new whistleblower protections, ethics training, and back-end risk checks, including AI-powered analytics that flag unusual transactions. “We’re looking at every disbursement and where it was deposited. What we saw in Kenya was a shock. And we want to be transparent.”
That “shock” refers to the bank’s sweeping anti-fraud purge in Kenya, where an internal investigation uncovered widespread collusion between staff and fraudsters. More than $15 million is estimated to have been lost in questionable transactions over the past two years, some of it wired to offshore accounts.
Equity Group CEO James Mwangi said some employees were dismissed over links to suspicious M-PESA and bank transactions, even where the amounts were small.
“This is not a toll station,” Mwangi said in May. “If you have ever eaten Mama Mboga’s chicken, the moment has come.”
The clean-up began in May and has since become one of the most aggressive anti-fraud campaigns in Kenya’s banking history. Mwangi has vowed to take the exercise across all seven of Equity’s markets, which include Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and the DRC.
Shoko said Uganda is now going through the same process, backed by external auditors and legal teams. “All affected staff are being given a fair chance to explain themselves. Some have, others haven’t—and disciplinary processes are underway,” he said.
He added that the exercise is expected to wrap up by the end of July.
Once a small building society in Kenya, Equity has grown into one of Africa’s biggest banks with $1.3 billion (KES180 billion) capitalisation, mainly offering affordable services to low-income customers. But with that growth—and a rapid shift to digital banking—has come new vulnerabilities, especially in internal systems and staff behaviour.
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