Suffered cyber hack via SWIFT system: City Union Bank CEO

The comments come a day after the small private lender disclosed it had discovered the three “fraudulent remittances,” which were sent via correspondent banks to accounts in Dubai, Turkey and China. CEO N Kamakodi called it a “conspiracy” involving multiple countries, and added the lender was still investigating how it had happened. “This is basically a cyber-attack by international cyber criminals,” he said, adding they saw “so far no evidence of any internal staff involvement,” but “we are very clear now the account holders are part of this conspiracy.” 

The disclosure from CUB comes as India has been gripped by an announcement by Punjab National Bank that it had been the victim of a $1.7 billion fraud. Brussels-based SWIFT has been urging banks to bolster security of computers used to transfer money since Bangladesh Bank lost $81 mn in a Feb 2016 cyber heist that targeted central bank computers used to move funds. 

State-run UCO Bank has an outstanding exposure of about $411.82 million in the PNB fraud case and that it was confident of receiving the payment. “The outstanding exposure involved in the transactions is approximately $411.82 million and the bank is fully confident to receive the payment from the PNB,” UCO Bank said in a regulatory filing.