Scandal at Raiffeisen / Hundreds of citizens’ money disappears from their accounts, mass theft suspected

An ever-growing number of citizens who are clients of Raiffeisen Bank are publicly reporting an alarming situation on social media: money disappearing from their Raiffeisen Bank accounts.

Kapitali has managed to verify the accounts of several of them, from which varying amounts of money were taken without them carrying out any transactions or purchases. The amounts taken range from €500 and possibly more.

In one case verified by Kapitali, 50,000 lek, or more than €500, was taken from a citizen’s account. This citizen had a balance of 100,000 lek in their account following the last transaction.

Today, the citizen made a transaction worth approximately €10, or around 1,100 lek. After completing the purchase, they received an SMS from Raiffeisen showing that the account balance was around 50,000 lek less.

In other words, although the person spent only 1,000 lek on the purchase, according to the message sent by Raiffeisen, around 50,000 lek, or approximately €540, had disappeared from the account.

Meanwhile, dozens of other citizens have reported the same phenomenon on social media, saying that amounts ranging from €500 to €1,000 had been taken from their accounts.

All of these citizens say they have tried dozens of times to contact the bank about the loss of their money, but Raiffeisen has not responded because the lines provided for customer contact are not answering.

Kapitali has learned that Raiffeisen is under a cyberattack through which citizens’ money is being taken. Just two days ago, the bank notified its clients in an official message that it was facing “smishing” cyberattacks, which steal clients’ data through fraudulent SMS messages.

It is not known whether the clients reporting the loss of money fell victim to these attacks. But what is certain is that Raiffeisen has suffered a security breach, affecting not only clients’ data but also their money.

Of course, in such cases, the bank fully compensates citizens for the money taken from them. But the fact that one of the country’s most important banks has fallen victim to a cyberattack of this scale once again raises the question of how prepared Albanian banks really are for the new reality of digitalization and whether they have invested enough to guarantee their clients’ security./ Kapitali.al