Bank of Albania descends on Raiffeisen Bank amid suspicions of interference and senior-level accountability

Immediately after the serious incident at Raiffeisen Bank, which affected the accounts of thousands of citizens, the Bank of Albania launched an inspection. Bank of Albania inspectors are currently at Raiffeisen, conducting a detailed investigation into what happened.

Initial suspicions point to interference caused by human error, although it has not yet been determined whether it came from outside or was internal.

According to sources, the incident involved an anomaly during the processing of Sunday’s daily batch. This is an automated process that runs overnight to process and update all transactions accumulated during the day.

In practice, the incident affected all transactions made by customers on Sunday, which were recorded twice in the system.

This meant that customers who had withdrawn money were charged twice. The same happened to others who had paid by card. A source told Kapitali that more than 40,000 transactions were affected.

The situation returned to normal and the anomalies were corrected a day later, but the incident caused considerable concern among customers.

Although Raiffeisen tried to downplay the incident with a stilted statement and an aggressive PR campaign, without explaining its cause, sources told Kapitali that the bank could face penalties, the severity of which will depend on the findings of the investigation. However, the incident could also cost senior Raiffeisen executives their jobs.

A week before the incident, Raiffeisen announced that it had completed its transition to the cloud, becoming the first bank in Albania to make this transformation.

“On September 17, 2026, we marked a historic milestone for Raiffeisen Bank Albania. For 22 years, our technology infrastructure has supported the bank’s operations 24 hours a day, every day of the week, including nights and public holidays. Today, we have completed the migration of our applications to the cloud. This is not a partial migration or a hybrid model, but a complete transformation. We have moved 100% to the cloud, achieving something no other bank in Albania has done before,” said Erion Serti, a member of the Management Board and IT director at Raiffeisen Bank Albania./ Kapitali.al