The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has scheduled a meeting on Monday with commercial banks and the Anti-Online Scam Operations Centre (AOC) to seek improvements in procedures being used in the freezing and unfreezing of bank accounts, based on a bank’s suspicion that they may be linked to online scammers.
According to Daranee Saeju, assistant BOT governor in charge of Payments System Policy and Financial Consumer Protection Group, the agencies agree that the procedures need to be updated, to stop the practice adversely impacting innocent bank customers, whose accounts were thought to be illegal “mule” accounts.
Many small retailers have complained on social media that their accounts have been frozen with little or no warning or right of redress, leaving them unable to conduct financial transactions or access their own money, thus affecting their businesses and personal lives, simply because money had been transferred to their accounts from unknown sources.
Daranee reportedly said that the problem is being caused by the intensified efforts of commercial banks and the technology crime suppression police to track the money trails of scammers, to recover the funds cheated from innocent bank customers.
The freezing of often innocent accounts occurs either due to some banks failing to update end-of-day balances or because the police asked the commercial banks to freeze them, according to Daranee.
Nonetheless, Daranee maintains that the freezing of suspect accounts is necessary to enable the tracking and recovering of stolen funds.
Bank customers who find their accounts frozen can call 1441, extension 2, to seek help.
