NEW DELHI: The State Bank of Mauritius (SBM) on Friday said it had lost Rs 143 crore in cyber fraud committed at its Nariman Point branch in the city on October 2. Later in the day however, the bank said it had recovered “most of the money”.
An SBM India spokesperson said, “A cyber incident took place on Tuesday 2 October 2018 whereby SBM India has been victim of a cyber attack through fraudulent SWIFT payments but the necessary measures have been taken to prevent any further damage. Based on proactive and prompt measures, we have managed to recover around most of the lost amount.
As of today, the lost amount is limited to Rs 19 crore which will come down even further post claiming the insurance money. We would like to assure our customers that not a single customer account has been impacted. We are working with the relevant authorities to get to the root of the matter.”
According to the complaint filed by the bank last week, hackers had made their way into the bank’s servers and routed money fraudulently with the help of illegal SWIFT transactions. Investigations into the fraud are ongoing but no one has been arrested yet, said the police.
This is the third such attack on a bank in the country this year. In February, several branches of the City Union Bank in Chennai lost Rs 34 crore in a similar attack while Rs 94 crore was siphoned off from the Cosmos Bank’s Pune headquarters in August. Seven people were arrested in the Pune case and cops also suspect their involvement in the Chennai case.