A man is ordered to pay a credit debt of 54,209 hryvnias, arising from a call from Kyivstar. What was the court's decision?

PrivatBank is demanding that a man repay a debt of 54,209 hryvnias under a loan agreement. However, it turned out that this debt arose due to a call from an alleged employee of Kyivstar, who gained access to the SIM card and the "Privat-24" account. This information is stated in the decision of the Lysyansk District Court of Cherkasy Oblast, published on December 6, 2024.

On April 8, 2023, an unknown person called the man's financial number, introduced themselves as an employee of the Kyivstar company, and prompted him to take certain actions that led to the reissue of his SIM card. Additionally, other information was provided to a third party, which allowed access to the client's Internet Banking account "Privat-24". According to the service adminka.privat24.ua, there were no changes recorded in the "Privat-24" account at the time of the transactions. This indicates that the client voluntarily disclosed confidential information, specifically the login and password for "Privat-24".

"The operations conducted on the client's card became possible due to the voluntary disclosure of confidential information and violation of the 'Terms and Conditions for Providing Banking Services'. The emergence of overdue debt occurs if the minimum payment is not made by the last calendar day (inclusive) of the month following the month in which expenses were incurred through the credit limit; the client's obligations are considered overdue. Due to the mentioned violations of obligations under the loan agreement and taking into account the funds paid to repay the debt, as of February 25, 2024, the defendant has a debt of 54,209 hryvnias, which consists of the following: 42,753 hryvnias – debt on the principal amount, 11,455 hryvnias - debt on overdue interest," stated PrivatBank.

Case Review

The statements made by the PrivatBank representative during the court hearing that the man provided access to his card account to third parties were not substantiated by proper evidence and thus remain an assumption. It was referenced that in his explanations to the investigator of the Zvenigorod District Police Department on April 10, 2023, he mentioned that he did not share any access codes for PrivatBank, but only confirmed access to Kyivstar.

"Therefore, the court finds it established that fraudulent actions with the defendant's card account occurred as a result of the reissue of the financial number by third parties, which allowed unauthorized access to the 'Privat-24' application, through which funds were withdrawn from the defendant's account," the case records state.

What was the court's decision?

The court denied the claim. The man did not receive loan funds in the amount of 46,500 hryvnias; instead, they were withdrawn from his card account through deception, and a pre-trial investigation is ongoing regarding this matter.

"The defendant fulfilled his obligations to the bank, notified the bank about the unauthorized withdrawal of funds from his account, and contacted law enforcement regarding the fraudulent actions. Based on the aforementioned, and considering that the bank did not inform the client about the payment transactions being made with the funds in his account, did not record the defendant's message regarding the denial of these payment transactions, did not conduct a proper investigation of the reported facts, and did not provide evidence of sending SMS messages with dynamic passwords to the reported phone number, as well as evidence of transferring this information to other parties or losing information that would allow payments to be made using Internet banking 'Privat-24', the court concluded that there were no circumstances conclusively proving that the defendant's actions or inactions contributed to the loss or illegal use of the PIN code or other information allowing the initiation of payment transactions," emphasized the court.