Kafilat Araoye, Managing Director, LOTUS Bank
This is contained in a statement by investigative journalist, @PIDOMNIGERIA via its Twitter page.

The statement reads; “On the 12 of March 2023, a customer of LOTUS BANK @LotusBank did a twenty million naira (20,000,000) transfer from her account, 10 million twice, it failed & the money wasn’t reversed. She contacted her bank, and they promised to reverse it. That they had network issues.”

“She waited 12, 13th, 14th, without seeing the 20 million naira reversal. She became agitated.”

“On the 15th of March, at about 4am she started receiving multiple alerts of reversals that lasted for several hours. At the end, @LotusBank reversed one billion, eight hundred million Naira (1,800,000,000) back to her account, while trying to reverse twenty million naira (20,000,000).”

“She called the bank to inform them of the erroneous reversal into her account, and the amount involved. The bank promised to compensate her, if she allow them to withdraw it back.”

“She granted them permission. But they left the money in her account for complete 3 days before completing their withdrawal, & she didn’t temper with the money either.”

“They withdrew their excess of 1.8 billion in her account and tampered with her account, unknown to her.”

“She waited on LOTUS BANK, to fulfill their promise of compensating her, but to no avail.”

“She forgot everything and moved on with her life, but unknown to her the bank is hell-bent on cleaning up their mess, so as not to compensate her.”

“She did some transactions. Transfer from her account & POS transaction with her card as well, but all declined. She went to her bank to complain and request for a statement of account.”

“That was when she discovered that @LotusBank had tampered with her account. The Bank Invaded her privacy, against bank ethics to clean all her records and transaction history.”

“They deleted her SMS alert, & email alert, and even the statement of account that showed anything that has to do with the 1.8 billion erroneously reversed into her account. In the process, the Bank deleted the transfer records she did and the POS record she did.”

“This means there is no record with the bank of her doing any transaction recently, and LOTUS BANK is not ready to refund her the failed transaction money, not to talk of the compensation they promised her.”

“If not for some screenshots she did while the money was being reversed, there wouldn’t have been any evidence to back up this claim.”

“LOTUS BANK should prove me wrong by showing the transaction history of this customer if it truly exists. @cenbank should look into this case.”