GEORGE TOWN: CIMB has countersued 12 parties, claiming there they had received "unjust enrichment" due to a processing error that eventually led to their accounts being frozen.

According to Free Malaysia Today, the bank made a court filing on March 30 seeking an order to compel all 12 to repay RM1.39mil wrongly credited into their accounts, including interest.

Earlier this year, a processing error by a remittance service caused fund transfers to customers to be wrongly credited twice. To recover the duplicate payments, the bank earmarked and froze affected accounts.

In response, the 12 customers on Feb 28 sued CIMB Bank Bhd and CIMB Bank Islamic Bhd over the system glitch.

They claimed that the errors were due to the negligence of the third party financial remittance service which led to double crediting errors into the accounts.

They further claimed they suffered and faced difficulties when they were unable to use their accounts.

The portal reported that CIMB claimed in a statement of defence that it had not violated any contract with its account holders as they had the power to debit or put on hold any account, as stated in the terms and conditions agreed to by bank users.

An "operational hold" was placed on affected accounts from January to Feb 13. However, the exact number of accounts affected was not disclosed.

Due to the duplicated transactions, the account holders had been "unjustly enriched" at the bank's expense, said CIMB.

It further added that the 12 suing parties did not alert the bank when duplicate funds were transferred into their accounts.

The bank further stated that it was legally and contractually allowed to recover the duplicate sum.

"The plaintiffs were able to receive funds in their respective accounts and/or make withdrawal of funds in excess of the amount of the duplicate credits received by each plaintiff.

"The plaintiffs have received and enjoyed, and have been enriched by way of the duplicate credits that were mistakenly credited into the plaintiffs' accounts by reason of the inadvertent processing error of MoneySend transfers as pleaded," said the defence statement, as reported.

https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2022/04/02/cimb-countersues-12-for-039unjust-enrichment039-over-twice-credited-funds