The news:
- A court in Lagos has ordered 27 banks to unfreeze accounts in connection with a ₦2.9 billion Flutterwave hack in February 2023.
- Flutterwave was granted a motion to freeze the account on February 27, 2023.
- While the court has ordered banks to remove the lien placed on the accounts, account owners say Access Bank and Providus Bank are yet to do so.
According to documents seen by Techpoint Africa, recipients of a ₦2.9 billion hack on Flutterwave have gotten a court order from The Magistrate Court of Lagos (Yaba Magisterial District sitting at Yaba) to lift the lien placed on their accounts on February 27, 2023.
Techpoint Africa reported on March 5, 2023, that hackers transferred ₦2,949,557,867 from the accounts of African fintech unicorn, Flutterwave.
The company's legal counsel reported the incident to the Deputy Commissioner of Police and filed a motion to freeze a total of 107 accounts.
However, the same court has ordered some of the accounts to be unfrozen.
While the court has vacated the post-no-debit placed on the account, some of the account owners said two banks, namely Access Bank and Providus Bank did not comply with the court order.
Techpoint Africa reached out to Flutterwave and the company is expected to respond with a statement concerning the matter soon.
This comes after a High Court authorised Flutterwave to recover ₦19 billion ($24 million) lost via unauthorised transactions by point of sale (PoS) merchants on its online platform.
The fintech company said it discovered, on October 10, 2023, that several PoS device merchants had abused their access by performing illegal transfers on its platform due to a "technical glitch."
The recovery process will involve reaching out to 6,000 account holders in 35 banks.
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Similarly, the hack from last year also included several banks which Flutterwave's legal counsel blamed for allowing the money to be moved to other accounts, widening the money trail.
Meanwhile, this court order proves that Flutterwave is still in the process of recovering funds that were illegally transferred a year ago.
