The banking system in the country is facing a new wave of alarm, as a real stream of denunciations from citizens in Tirana and its surroundings has arrived in the editorial office, who report the mysterious disappearance of money from their accounts at Raiffeisen Bank. Successive messages arriving over the past few hours indicate that the money saved may evaporate without any explanation.
What makes this situation even more suspicious is the way these financial movements appear in the official applications. Citizens who have reported to JOQ show that in the history of transactions, the missing money appears simply as “ATM Withdrawal”. Under normal conditions, each ATM withdrawal is recorded with detailed data, including the ATM identification code, exact time and geographic location. In the current case, the system only displays a general description, hiding the traces of where and how the Albanians’ money ended up.
This total lack of transparency and deliberate silence on the part of bank executives raises big questions about what is really going on behind closed doors. Is Raiffeisen Bank facing a large-scale cyber attack, has its digital infrastructure been compromised, or are we facing a literal theft from within? The worst of all, the question that thousands of concerned citizens are asking today is whether the bank itself is taking money from their accounts through secret electronic maneuvers or abusive errors in the system, exploiting the lack of control and leaving customers without any answers.
While many citizens who have entrusted their savings to this bank are facing such a situation, Raiffeisen Bank must inform all customers what is happening with their money behind closed doors. But the fall of one of the country’s most important banks to a cyber attack of this magnitude raises again the question of how prepared Albanian banks are in the new digital reality and whether they have invested enough to guarantee the security of their customers./ JOQ
