Indias City Union Bank hit by cyber hack via SWIFT system

The three “fraudulent remittances”, which were sent via correspondent banks to accounts in Dubai, Turkey and China had been discovered and disclosed on February 2017 by a small private lender.

City Union said it had been able to block one of the remittances, totalling USD 500,000, which was being sent through a Standard Chartered Bank account in New York to a Dubai-based lender. A second transfer of USD 372,150 was routed through a Standard Chartered Bank account in Frankfurt to a Turkish account, although the Turkish lender had blocked the transfer from being finalised.

A third totalling USD 1 million was sent through a Bank of America account in New York to a China-based bank, Zhejiang Rural Credit Cooperative Union in Hangzhou.

The disclosure from City Bank comes as India has been affected by another heist, when USD 1.7 billion had been transferred as unauthorized loans from Punjab National Bank’s employees, according to Reuters.