Union Bank struggles to recover N9.3bn customers’ stolen money

Union Bank of Nigeria Plc is struggling to recover over N9 billion stolen from customers’ accounts.

The latest development is coming one year and three months after the Central Bank of Nigeria sacked the bank’s board and entire management citing governance failures.

Thus, a new management team led by Yetunde Oni was appointed to lead the bank.

A total of N9,329,322,870.00 (nine billion, three hundred and twenty-nine million, three hundred and twenty-two thousand, eight hundred and seventy naira) was withdrawn from the bank’s customers’ accounts without authorisation, a significant operational system breach on the part of the bank, prompting the bank to seek legal intervention to recover the money.

In a suit marked FHC/L/CS/629/2025, filed before the Federal High Court in Lagos, Union Bank sought a preservative order compelling the financial institutions involved to place Post No Debit restrictions on the accounts of all beneficiaries and to return the stolen funds traced to their institutions.

According to the bank, the fraud followed an operational failure and fraud in its core banking system on March 23, 2025, which led to unauthorized transfers from customers’ accounts.

An affidavit deposed to by Oluwasegun Falola, head of the E-Fraud Investigations Department at Union Bank, stated that the funds were fraudulently and erroneously transferred from the bank to various accounts across 53 financial institutions.

Falola explained that on March 23, 2025, the bank observed that N9.3 billion had been debited from customer accounts and dispersed into various accounts maintained by the respondent banks. He added that Union Bank immediately contacted the banks involved in a bid to halt further dissipation of the funds.

“The Fraud Desk Department of the bank, in the course of its investigations, discovered that the monies were transferred in trickles into several accounts domiciled with the 1st to 54th Respondents,” the affidavit stated.

Union Bank attributed the unauthorized debits to a system glitch and exploitation, which it says enabled the illicit transfers.

“The funds were erroneously and fraudulently transferred from customers’ accounts.

“Upon further investigation, it was found that the funds were subsequently moved from these primary beneficiary accounts to other accounts also held by the respondents.”

The bank disclosed that it had submitted the list of recipient accounts to the respective financial institutions as a preliminary measure to recover any remaining funds.

To support its recovery efforts, the bank said its internal audit and legal departments compiled detailed reports tracing the flow of funds and identifying all beneficiary accounts.

When the case was mentioned on April 2, 2025, Union Bank’s counsel, A. Adedoyin-Adeniyi, informed the court that the stolen funds were still being moved.

“₦9.3 billion has been moved from the account, and they are still moving funds. We now have more people involved in moving the funds,” the lawyer told the court.

In his ruling, Justice Deinde Dipeolu agreed with the submissions and thereafter granted a motion ex parte filed by the bank concerning the unauthorized fund transfers.

“Having reviewed the motion ex parte, the application is hereby granted,” the judge ruled.

The incident has raised broader concerns about the security of Nigeria’s banking infrastructure, especially as interbank transactions continue to increase. Financial analysts suggest that outdated systems and inadequate oversight may be exacerbating vulnerabilities, heightening the risk of fraud and transactional errors.