N1.7 Billion Electronic Transfer Fraud Rocks A Nigerian Bank
OpenLife Nigeria reports that in a bid to recover a total sum of N1,755,376,156.34 fraudulently transfer electronically from its vault, Globus Bank Limited has filed an application before a Lagos High Court, urging the court to order the reversal of the funds from the account of the fraudulent beneficiaries domicile in eight commercial banks.
According to an affidavit sworn to by the legal officer of Globus bank, Kosisochukwu Ngene, before the court by a Legal practitioner, Barrister V.K.Banjo, the deponent make oath and states as follows:
That Globus bank is a commercial bank with the registered office at No 6, Adeyemo Alakija street, Victoria Island, Lagos and licensed under the laws of Nigeria to carry out banking business in Nigeria.
That between Monday 6th and Saturday 11th of June 2022, there was a system glitch in the Globus bank’s Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) application, which led to the processing of several fraudulent and unauthorized electronic transfer in the sum of N1,755,376,156.34 (One Billion, Seven Hundred and Fifty-Five Million, Three Hundred and Seventy-Six Thousand, One Hundred Fifty-Six Naira thirty four kobo.
The Bank also said that the 709 Globus bank customers’ who were Involved in the fraudulently transfer to the various accounts domiciled with the 8 commercial banks are contain in the Excel sheet filed before the court.
The Bank further stated that immediately they discovered the glitch, the bank instantaneously notified all the banks involved and requested that the beneficiary accounts be restricted in line with Central bank of Nigeria regulation to avoid dissipation of the funds fraudulently transferred into the accounts domiciled with the banks.
As a follow up, the bank said they immediately approached the Magistrate Court, in the Yaba Magisterial District and obtained an order directing the banks to freeze and reverse the amount fraudulently transferred into various accounts domiciled in the banks.
They explained that in response to the order served on the receiving banks, some of them were able to salvage certain sum.
According to Globus Bank, the total sum of N817,998,969.85 were returned while the total sum of N962,019,843.35 is still outstanding.
In an Excel sheet, which contains the names of the banks that received the payments, the total amount fraudulently transferred from Globus Bank, the total amount salvaged and returned to the Bank including total amount outstanding as analyzed, is filed before the court.
They noted that the parties in this suit are also financial institutions and they therefore, seek the order of the court for reversal.
They explained that some of the banks are ready and willing to reverse and remit the salvaged sum to the Globus Bank when the order of the court was served on them. But they have further requested an order of the high court to enable them reverse and remit the salvaged funds, adding that the requirement for formal proceedings has resulted in the apparent delay between the date of the transaction and the filing of the instant application.
Prayers
Consequently, Globus Bank Limited is seeking the following reliefs from the court.
An Order of the Court directing all the eight banks to immediately reverse and remit to, Globus bank Limited the total sum of N962,019,843.35 (Nine hundred and sixty two million, nineteen thousand , eight hundred and forty three naira, thirty five kobo), being the outstanding sum yet to be salvaged from the fraudulent transfer into several accounts domiciled with the eight Respondents from the Globus bank 709 customers’ accounts, less depleted sum.
An order directing the eight commercial banks to release all account information in respect of the destination accounts and the beneficiaries of the transfer funds
And for such further order(s) as the court may deem fit to make in the circumstances of this case.
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