Investor demands €70,000 ‘refund’ from Bank of Valletta

A South African investor has asked the courts to order Bank of Valletta refund him €70,000 which had been fraudulently withdrawn by a third party.

In a judicial protest signed by lawyer Alessandro Lia, the man is claiming that he had invested €100,000 in a fund managed by BOV subsidiary Valletta Fund Services Limited, in April 2014. 

Shortly afterwards, €70,000 of his investment was transferred to an Indonesian bank, without his knowledge.

It was only when the man received an e-mail from BOV querying a second request, which would have withdrawn the remaining funds, that the fraud came to light.

The man informed BOV that he had made no such request and asked to be sent a copy of the instructions which it had acted on. The bank supplied him with copies of the two sets of instructions which it had received from an unidentified third-party who had used confidential details which the plaintiff had submitted to the bank, asking for the funds to be transferred to a foreign account. 

The man subsequently instructed the bank not to process any further requests on his account, thwarting the second attempt, but as the bank had made no reference to the original withdrawal of €70,000, it took the man till January 2015 to notice that BOV had processed the original fraudulent instructions and transferred the funds from his investment account to an account in Indonesia. 

A police report was filed, however efforts by the Economic Crimes Unit to trace the funds proved fruitless.

The protest concludes with a demand that BOV repay him the €70,000 within two weeks, also holding it responsible for any resulting losses.