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The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE), the biggest bank in the country, says that it has recovered 99.13 percent of money that was illegally withdrawn during a “system failure” it went through in March 2024.CBE has recovered Birr 794.43 million ($13.8 million), of the total illegally withdrawn money of nearly USD 14 million for the IT system upgrade incident on March 16, 2024.
The bank said that the remaining 0.87percent of the money, or Birr 6.99 million, is expected to be recovered shortly. The bank had released the names and photographs of those who were allegedly involved in the illegal withdrawal of the money, but the practice drew extensive criticism from activists and rights groups.
All previously posted identities and photographs have been removed from the bank’s social media accounts since the majority of the people whose names and images were placed there have paid for the money that was taken inappropriately. It will be recalled that on March 16, 2024, the Bank’s online system and ATM machines were allowing clients, for several hours, to withdraw money they did not have in their accounts. According to reports at the time, university students in the capital Addis Ababa, and Jimma among others, were mostly involved in the “illegal withdrawal and transfer” of money.
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Initially, there were reports that the bank lost billions of birr due to the problem. However, the bank claimed that the amount of money lost to illegal transactions was only 800 million Ethiopian Birr.
