Justice Deinde Dipeolu of the Federal High Court in Lagos has issued a ruling mandating 54 banks to immediately return a total of N9,329,322,870 that was fraudulently siphoned from an old generation bank through a cyberattack.
The ruling, delivered on April 15, 2025, came in response to an ex parte motion filed under suit number FHC/L/CS/629/2025.
The court directed the affected financial institutions to impose a Post No Debit restriction on all accounts that received the funds and to initiate the return of any available balance to the source bank.
According to the plaintiff, the incident occurred on March 23, 2025, when a compromise in the bank’s core system enabled unauthorised withdrawals from numerous customer accounts.
The funds—totaling over N9.3 billion—were subsequently distributed across various accounts in the 54 banks named in the suit.
Upon detecting the breach, the bank said it moved swiftly to alert the recipient institutions and began a comprehensive tracking of the disbursed funds.
Investigations uncovered that the stolen money had been routed in layers: from the bank into primary accounts, and then forwarded to secondary and tertiary beneficiaries.
Justice Dipeolu, in his judgment, instructed that the affected banks furnish details of all implicated accounts, including their current balances and any amounts that had already been transferred out.
The judge further ordered the banks to “immediately return all recoverable funds to the plaintiff bank.”
He added that the institutions must provide “comprehensive customer data” tied to the transactions—such as account names and final destinations of the funds.
The court also mandated that restrictions remain in place on all recipient accounts, but only to the extent of the funds they received.
These limitations are not to affect other legitimate customer funds.
“For the avoidance of doubt and for clarity, the order is only in respect of funds erroneously transferred and sums salvaged,” Justice Dipeolu stated.
He affirmed that the stolen funds “belong to the plaintiff and not the customers of the respondent banks”.
