Ethiopia’s largest bank is trying to recover more than US$40 million after a technical glitch allowed customers withdraw more money than they had in their accounts.
There were huge queues at ATMs after the problem was detected in the Commercial Bank of Ethiopiareported the local press.
The news about the technical failure on Saturday was spread on social networks by university students, who withdrew a large part of the funds, reported the bank’s CEO, Abe Sano.
The bank did not disclose how much money was withdrawn, but Abe told reporters that half a million transactions were recorded during the outage. A local newspaper reported that the amount of money lost amounts to 2.4 billion Ethiopian birrs (US$42 million).
The problem was caused by “update and a routine inspection to the system” and not due to a cyber attack, the central bank of Ethiopia reported in a statement.
The Ethiopian banking system closed for several hours while the problem was repaired and during that time customers were unable to withdraw cash.
He Commercial Bank of Ethiopiaestablished in 1963, is the country’s largest bank, with 40 million customers.
Abe said the bank is working with police to recover the lost money. The bank will not press charges against students who withdrew money they did not have, he said.
A spokesperson for the bank could not be reached for further details.
Source: Gestion
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