Two employees duped the bank, deposited 22 times more money than India’s GDP in the customer’s account
If a big mistake committed by Citigroup, one of the world’s largest banks, was not caught in time, it would have been recorded as the biggest mistake in history. Actually, the bank mistakenly deposited a full $81 trillion (67.31 lakh billion rupees) in a customer’s account instead of $280. This amount is 22 times more than India’s estimated GDP of 2024 (about $3.7 trillion). Fortunately, a bank employee caught this mistake after some time and it was withdrawn. The customer in whose account the money was deposited did not withdraw a single rupee from his account.
This incident is from April last year. A payment employee of Citigroup put this huge amount in the customer’s account. The surprising thing is that this transaction was also checked by another officer, but still the mistake was not caught. When this payment was about to be processed the next day, a third employee caught this mistake 90 minutes later. After this there was a stir and after a few hours of hard work the transaction was finally canceled.
What did the bank say?
According to a Financial Times report, a Citigroup spokesperson said, “Payment of such a large amount was not really possible, but our security system immediately caught this input error and corrected it. Our preventive system had already ensured that no money went out of the bank.”
Not the first time Citigroup made a mistake
According to the bank, neither the customer nor the bank suffered any loss due to this incident. But this is not the first time Citigroup has made headlines for such mistakes. According to the report, last year itself 10 major mistakes of $1 billion or more happened in the bank, although this is less than the 13 mistakes of 2022.
Citigroup had to pay a hefty fine of $136 million in July last year as it failed to prevent these mistakes. Earlier in 2020 also the bank was fined $400 million. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser, who replaced Michael Corbut in 2021, says fixing the bank’s regulatory problems is her “top priority”. However, despite this, the bank still faces a fine of $136 million by US regulatory agencies in 2023.
Lesson or just another mistake?
This mistake of Citigroup has raised many questions about security and vigilance in the banking sector. If this mistake was not caught in time, it could have been included in the biggest banking mistakes in history.
