Central Bank of India has reported unauthorised transactions worth Rs 13.97 crore from its settlement account with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), prompting the Mumbai Police to register a first information report (FIR) against unknown persons.
According to the bank's complaint, 187 unauthorised transfers were carried out between October 15 and October 17, with the money routed to 36 bank accounts. The bank has alleged that unidentified persons gained unauthorised access to the central Structured Financial Messaging System (SFMS) server of Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services (Iftas), a wholly owned subsidiary of the RBI, and diverted funds from its account with the central bank.
The FIR was registered at Mumbai's Nodal Cyber Police Station following a complaint by the bank's general manager (treasury). The complaint details six transfers on October 15, followed by 88 on October 16 and another 93 on October 17.
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The bank's internal team could not trace any of the 187 transactions through its branches, internet or mobile banking channels, or any other banking channel, the complaint stated. The transfers were also missing from its core banking system, RTGS settlement account and SFMS server.
While partial traces of 10 accounts were found in SFMS database logs, the corresponding transaction IDs were absent from the bank's records, according to the complaint. The bank further stated that the accounts identified as payers in the transactions did not belong to Central Bank of India.
Hindustan Times citing a police official said that investigators had limited information about the transactions, making it difficult to establish how the funds were siphoned off.
The SFMS facilitates the exchange of financial messages between banks for payments processed through the RBI's Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) systems.
Under the normal RTGS process, a bank records a customer's payment instruction in its core banking system, debits the customer's account and credits the amount to its RTGS settlement account. A payment message is then transmitted through the bank's SFMS server to Iftas's central SFMS server, enabling the corresponding debit from the bank's settlement account with the RBI.
The complaint alleges that the perpetrators exploited this messaging infrastructure to divert funds without the transactions being recorded in the bank's systems.
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Central Bank of India said it had promptly alerted the RBI, Iftas, the Daksh portal, the National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIPC) and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In).
The police have registered a case involving cheating and personation against unknown persons. The investigation is expected to establish how the transfers were executed and identify those responsible.
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