Sanctions for the issuance of Dud Cheques
Banks and the General Public are reminded that under section 313(A) of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29) as amended, it is an offence punishable by a fine and/or imprisonment of up to five (5) years for any person to issue a bad/dud cheque.
Despite the above law, the Bank of Ghana (BoG) has observed with grave concern, the high issuance of dud cheques by some customers, leading to a lack of confidence in accepting cheques for transactions.
To further discourage this malpractice, the BoG has revised its sanctions in respect of the issuance of dud cheques for the strict compliance of banks as follows:
Sanctions
- A bank shall issue a Warning Notification (via SMS, email or any other established mode of communication) to a customer who issues a dud cheque for the first time and report the offence to the credit reference bureaux. The bank shall place the customer under surveillance for a minimum period of three (3) years. The notification shall also indicate further sanctions that will be applied in the event of subsequent breaches.
- Where a customer issues a dud cheque for the second time within three (3) years of the first offence, the bank concerned, in addition to the above sanctions under paragraph 1, shall report the conduct of the customer to the BoG and the customer’s details and breach shall be recorded in a dud cheque register maintained at the BoG.
- Where a customer issues a dud cheque on a third occasion within three (3) years of the first offence, the bank concerned, in addition to the above sanctions under paragraph 1 and 2, shall again inform the BoG. The BoG shall ban the customer from issuing cheques in Ghana for a minimum period of three (3) years. The BoG shall notify all banks of the ban and publish a list of all third offenders in two daily newspapers of national circulation. The customer may, however, be permitted to receive cheques and funds into the affected account and perform other electronic transactions on the account. Additionally, BoG, shall ban such a customer from accessing new credit facilities from the banking system for a period of three (3) years.
- Upon receipt of the notification of the ban by BoG, the bank concerned shall notify the customer within five (5) working days of the ban, to recall all unused cheque books and shall not issue new cheque books to the affected customer until the sanctions are lifted. Where a customer fails to return the unused cheque books within a period of ten (10) days from the notification date, the customer shall be reported to the law enforcement agencies for further action.
The above directives take effect from 11th March, 2021.