Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, under the leadership of Managing Director Yetunde Oni, is currently contending with a major financial scandal after a security breach in its core operations system resulted in a loss of ₦9.3 billion.
The incident, reported by THE WITNESS, comes just over a year after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) dissolved the bank’s board and executive team due to governance issues, installing new leadership to steer the institution forward.
The bank is working to recover ₦9,329,322,870.00 illicitly withdrawn from customers’ accounts without their consent. The unauthorized transactions were traced to a massive cyber breach on March 23, 2025, which exploited flaws in Union Bank’s core banking infrastructure.
Legal documents filed at the Federal High Court in Lagos, under case number FHC/L/CS/629/2025, show that Union Bank is requesting a court order to freeze the accounts of all individuals and entities who received portions of the stolen funds. The bank is also asking the court to mandate the return of the diverted funds from the 53 implicated financial institutions.
Oluwasegun Falola, who leads Union Bank’s E-Fraud Investigations Department, detailed in a sworn affidavit that the funds were systematically funnelled into numerous accounts across various banks. He revealed that the bank detected the breach on March 23 and swiftly reached out to the institutions involved to prevent further fund movements.
According to Falola, Union Bank’s fraud team discovered that the stolen funds were distributed in small amounts into several accounts, with the money later transferred into additional accounts also controlled by respondents in the lawsuit.
The bank described the incident as a combined result of an internal system failure and external exploitation. It has since shared detailed account information with the relevant financial institutions as part of its ongoing recovery strategy.
Union Bank’s legal counsel, A. Adedoyin-Adeniyi, informed the court on April 2, 2025, that the funds were still being actively moved through various accounts, raising concerns about the growing number of people involved in the scheme.
Justice Deinde Dipeolu, presiding over the matter, reviewed the bank’s ex parte application and ruled in favour of Union Bank, granting the motion to freeze accounts associated with the unauthorized transactions.
