Wema Bank PLC has taken legal action against 26 financial institutions, seeking a court order to recover N888,301,598.15 allegedly withdrawn from its accounts without authorization due to a system glitch.

The bank, in a suit filed before the Federal High Court in Lagos, urged the court to issue a preservative order mandating the financial institutions to return the funds traced to accounts held within their institutions.

In an affidavit written by Kehinde Buari, head of special Review & investigation of Wema Bank PLC, in  support of an application filed before the court by a Lagos lawyer, It was alleged that, Wema Bank PLC, experienced a system glitch on one of its core banking applications on 16th of January, 2025, which resulted in the unauthorised transfer of substantial funds from accounts held with the bank, as well as accounts held with the respective financial institutions dragged before the court.

After the incident, Wema Bank PLC commenced the tracing of the funds that were transferred without due authorization. While some of the funds have been traced internally, others have been traced to accounts held with the defendants /financial institutions.

The bank’s initial investigations led to the tracing of funds to accounts held with some of the defendants.

Further investigations revealed that the recipients of these funds attempted to dissipate, hide and or obscure the same by moving part of the funds to some of the financial institutions.

The bank took immediate steps to notify the financial institutions of the glitch and the unauthorised transfers of funds from the bank’s customers’ accounts to accounts held with the defendants.

The bank requested the beneficiary accounts held with the defendants to be immediately restricted/sequestered in order to protect/salvage the bank’s customers’ funds.

Some of the financial institutions immediately restricted the beneficiary accounts and sequestered/salvaged a significant portion of the funds that were transferred out of the plaintiff’s customers without authorisation.

The total amount salvaged by the said defendants is N888,301,598.15 (Eight Hundred and Eighty-Eight Million, Three Hundred and One Thousand, Five Hundred and Ninety-Eight Naira, Fifteen Kobo)

Further to the above, the bank’s Internal Audit and Legal Teams detailed the outcome of the ongoing investigations tracing the funds moved to accounts held with the defendants as a result of the system glitch.

Accordingly, an Internal Memo dated 16 January 2025 and two summaries dated 20 January 2025 and 21 January 2025 were issued, showing:

i.Particulars of the sums transferred out of the bank’s customers’ accounts and traced to other accounts held with the bank as well as to accounts held by the respective defendant.

Particulars of the beneficiary accounts in respect of the traced sums.

iii. Particulars of the sums salvaged by the respective defendants.    Respectively, copies of the bank’s internal memos, dated 20 January 2025 and 21 January 2025, have been filed before the court.

The investigation into the unauthorised movement of funds continued after the investigations conducted above.

Mr. Buari stated further that he knows that the beneficiaries/recipients of the unauthorised funds attempted to disguise/obscure the source of the said funds by dissipating the same through an intricate web of transfers.

Following the conclusion of further investigations, the plaintiff traced additional funds to the defendants.

Due to the complicated and intricate nature of the movement of the funds from  Wema Bank, it became necessary to involve the Nigeria Interbank Settlement System ( NIBSS)

The NIBSS promptly exchanged correspondence with several banks on 16th January 2025 regarding funds traced to the said banks from Wema Bank as a result of the system glitch.

i.The total sums traced to and or salvaged by the respective defendants, particularly as shown in various Exhibits, ought to be returned to recovered by Wema Bank from the respective defendants.

The financial institutions/defendants  ought to return to the plaintiff the total salvaged sum of N888,301,598.15 (Eight Hundred and Eighty-Eight Million, Three Hundred and One Thousand, Five Hundred and

Further to the above, the tracing of the millions of funds transferred without authorisation is still ongoing.

Wema Bank has approached this honourable court to secure an order directing and enabling the respective defendants to return the affected funds to the bank

The steps taken by the defendants are only temporary, pending the issuance of preservative, repatriation and further orders by the honourable court.

Further to the above steps, the plaintiff is required to obtain the relevant/necessary orders from this honourable court, failing which the defendants would be constrained to release the ringfenced/sequestered/salvaged funds.

Consequently, Wema Bank is seeking for:

An order directing/mandating the 26 financial institutions listed before the court to reverse/return to Wema Bank PLC the total sum of money running into Billions of Naira as appearing in Exhibits attached to the affidavit in support of the originating summons.

.  An order directing/mandating each of the respective defendants to reverse/return to the plaintiff, any other/further sum of money, as may be traced and or salvaged from funds moved without authorization from accounts held with Wema Bank to accounts held with respective defendants, as a result of the system glitch that occurred on 16 January 2025.

An order directing/ mandating the respective management/ officers of the respective defendants to disclose to the plaintiff and or relevant law enforcement/regulatory agencies, all required/relevant particulars of account holders who have dissipated the sun’s transferred to their accounts without authorisation, for purposes of investigation and or recovery.

An order directing/mandating the respective

management/officers of the respective defendants to place on the Central Bank of Nigeria Credit Risk Management System List and any other Watchlist, the Bank Verification Numbers (BVNs) of all account holders who have dissipated the sums transferred to their accounts without authorisation, until the full recovery of the dissipated funds by the plaintiff.