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7min chapter
Women's radio in Afghanistan
Fifth Floor
Unlimited Cash Withdrawals Chaos
A detailed account of the chaos resulting from ATMs dispensing unlimited amounts of money in the commercial bank of Ethiopia, causing students to queue up and conduct numerous transactions. The aftermath, including account suspensions, audits, and calls for money return, is explored through interviews with witnesses.
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Speaker 1
And have we heard anything from on San Suji's brother? No,
Speaker 2
we we tried. Like we tried. He was quite very, not very kind of willing to talk to. We did have an interview with him in 2018 about this very case then. We asked him, why you wanted to sell this property? That's an iconic historic place. And your sister who had suffered a lot is standing. He said that no, he accused on San Suji as being a recursive trend. Like, you know, she wasn't willing to negotiate. And we asked that this is iconic. There are many historic buildings in the world who which have been auctioned off previously. So why should that be different this time? He
Speaker 1
said, thank you so much. That was so in time. The BBC Burmese editor giving us enough to turn the auction of the house of on San Suji. Now, the commercial bank of Ethiopia has been struggling to retrieve funds after an incident. It described as a system problem, allowed account holders to withdraw unlimited amounts of money. A large portion of the cash was withdrawn by students as long queues formed outside ATM machines on university campuses. Caleb Moggis of BBC Amharic has been following the story. And when I spoke to him, he began by telling me how events unfolded last weekend.
Speaker 5
So it was last Friday around midnight or early Saturday morning, the 15th of March or the 16th of March, the commercial bank of Ethiopia. Account holders realized that they can withdraw any amount of money from from ATMs from their mobile applications. So this happened at midnight and somehow world travelled fast in universities particularly. And students have been withdrawing money, sending money to other accounts, transacting. And I think for about an hour or two, this has been happening and the commercial bank was not aware of that. And after that, the commercial bank of Ethiopia has been at all transactions, stopped operations of ATMs. And it's been, I don't know if this is the right word, but mayhem early morning of Saturday. So tell
Speaker 1
us about the bank itself. So
Speaker 5
the commercial bank of Ethiopia is one of one of the largest and oldest banks in Ethiopia. It was founded as a state bank of Ethiopia in 1942, established in 1942. It has more than 40 million account holders. It has 17 million mobile application users. So it's the biggest in the country and it's state owned. So it has branches in every corner and they have branches in university campuses, in rural areas, in remote areas. For the bank to experience, this is really a
Speaker 1
big thing. And Calibia mentioned that the news of the sludge spread really fast on university campuses. Why?
Speaker 5
I know that from experience, world travels fast in university campuses. And we have messaging apps nowadays. They use WhatsApp, Telegram, and BBC, I'm how they managed to speak to some students and ask how, why does this happen? They said, we don't really know, but we get phone calls texts from our friends in different campuses around the country. And the students were up late night studying for their exams. It's Friday night, but they know Saturday, they don't have to wake up early in the morning because there are no classes open. So they were doing what any student would do, late night. And they hear the news that ATMs are giving any amount of money that they want and they run towards the machines. So what do we know about the figures? How much money was withdrawn? The exact figure has not been released. Some local media organizations and some news agency say 40 million dollars have been transacted. But the bank manager denied this figure and they say they will release the exact figures after the audit is complete. But he said, the manager said 490,000 transactions have been have been performed during that period and 10,000 customers has transacted in that train or glitch period for about two hours. The exact figure will be released sometime by the end of this
Speaker 1
week. And did this have knock on effects on other banks as well in the
Speaker 5
country? So the students have managed to send some money to other private banks as well. And we managed to speak to one person who works for a bank called Dashin Bank, a private bank. And he told us that around 4,500 transactions has been made from commercial bank of Ethiopia account holders to this private bank. And some private banks were forced to suspend account holders of their bank. So the thing is private banks have not said anything. That has any connection with the glitch of the commercial bank of Ethiopia. So we don't really know that some some have endlessly said, yeah, we have been affected and we have to close some accounts because
Speaker 1
of this. Over the past few days, how have the banks tried to recoup some of this money?
Speaker 5
The commission of bank of Ethiopia, they actually treated something in the morning. They said anyone who has legally withdrawn money or transacted money during the glitch has to return the money by the end of Saturday. Otherwise, they will be prosecuted. And the bank has not said anything about if anyone has returned the money. But we managed to speak to some branches in the university campuses. And they said, some students actually returned the money, let Saturday morning in fear of being prosecuted or charged. We managed to speak to some students from mainly three or four universities. One is the largest one at the South Bank University in the capital. We have Jimmy University in the western part of the country and Howaza and Dile University in the southern part of the country. And we managed to speak to few students who have witnessed what happened during this glitch. So these students say, yeah, of course, police has to choose away some students from these ATM machines. We don't have the exact figure, but the bank is trying its best to make people return the money without being prosecuted or charged. But they say after Saturday, it's up to the students, they will release identities and photos of these individuals who have transacted money in media, in the
Speaker 1
country.
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