Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – December 7, 2023: Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) is the largest bank in the country.
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Ethiopia’s largest bank is reportedly struggling to recoup millions of dollars after a weekend outage allowed customers to withdraw unlimited funds. local media reports.
More than $40 million was reportedly withdrawn from Ethiopian state-owned commercial banks or transferred to other banks as customers found they could withdraw more than their total balances. Trading stopped after a few hours.
Bank President Abi Sano said at a news conference on Monday that most of the cash was withdrawn by students. BBC report Long lines formed at campus ATMs.
Several universities have urged students to return cash that is not theirs, and Sarno reportedly said at a news conference on Monday that anyone who returns the money will not be criminally prosecuted.
in a Post on X, the CBE confirmed the service outage but denied it was the result of a cyber attack. It added that its ATM services are now “fully operational,” according to Google Translate.
Ethiopia’s central bank, which oversees its financial sector, said in a statement that the outage was the result of a systemic security check and “was not an incident that endangered the bank, its customers and the entire financial system,” according to a Google translation.
CNBC has reached out to CBE for comment.
