- Safaricom dismissed 118 employees for fraud-related offences in the financial year ended March 2026, up from 113 the previous year
- The telco referred 14 fraud cases to law enforcement agencies in FY2026, double the seven cases reported to police in FY2025
- Fraud remained the most common concern raised through Safaricom's ethics hotline, as the company's digital financial services expanded in scale
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Safaricom dismissed 118 employees for fraud-related offences in the financial year ended March 2026, up from 113 in the prior year, according to the company's 2026 Sustainable Business Report.
Source: Twitter
Referrals to law enforcement agencies also doubled, rising from seven in FY2025 to 14 in FY2026, marking a significant escalation in how the telco is responding to internal misconduct.
The report reveals that fraud remained the most frequently reported category of concern through Safaricom's independently managed, anonymous ethics hotline.
In addition to the 118 dismissals, the company issued three disciplinary warnings in FY2026, compared with none the previous year, indicating a broader spread of disciplinary outcomes alongside a larger overall caseload.
Fraud cases are identified either through customer complaints or through Safaricom's internal fraud management system, which conducts in-depth annual reviews of key processes.
Once flagged, cases are investigated by a manager or the Ethics and Compliance team, which determines whether the matter warrants an informal resolution or a formal disciplinary process.
Investigation records are tracked using password-protected files accessible only to the Ethics and Compliance team.
After an investigation concludes, all documentation is handed to the Human Resources department, and a disciplinary committee applies Safaricom's Disciplinary Policy and Procedure to determine the outcome.
Grounds for dismissal include theft, falsification of records, unauthorised access to customer call data, security breaches and commission of a criminal offence.
Rising Fraud Risk Tied to Digital Growth
The report links the growing fraud challenge to the expansion of Safaricom's digital financial services, particularly M-PESA, Kenya's largest mobile money platform.
During FY2026, the company revised its anti-money laundering and counter-financing of terrorism policy to strengthen financial crime controls "as our digital financial services grow in scale and complexity".
Safaricom also reconstituted five Board committees, including the Board Risk and ESG Committee, with new mandates effective August 1, 2025, and introduced a Governance Framework on Policies to formalise how internal rules are developed and maintained.
On training, 98% of employees participated in the annual ethics awareness programme in FY2026, unchanged from FY2025.
The company also extended compliance guidance to business partners, with KYC and ethics training reaching 141 suppliers, 339 dealers and 972 M-PESA agents during the year. Awareness broadcasts to all M-PESA agents rose sharply, from 11 to 37.
The 118 dismissals in FY2026 represent the highest figure across the two years covered by the report and signal that Safaricom is policing internal conduct alongside external fraud threats.
The company's decision to publish the figures in full, including the increase in law enforcement referrals, reflects the transparency obligations of a listed company operating at the centre of Kenya's digital economy.
Source: TUKO.co.ke