A PrivatBank client had over 43,000 hryvnias withdrawn from her card for entertainment. Did the court order the funds to be returned?

A woman lost 43,798 hryvnias from her account at PrivatBank. According to the statement of account activity, the funds were spent on entertainment. This was stated in the decision of the Veselynivskyi District Court of Mykolaiv Oblast, published on August 30, 2024.

On April 17, 2022, an unauthorized withdrawal of funds occurred from the woman's account, during which unknown individuals fraudulently withdrew 42,000 hryvnias, and subsequently transferred 1,800 hryvnias from another account to a bank card. She immediately called the bank's hotline to block her card account and reported the fraudulent activities concerning her accounts. At the same time, she filed a complaint with the police regarding the criminal offense committed against her. On April 21, 2022, a criminal proceeding was entered into the Unified State Register of Pre-trial Investigations under the preliminary qualification of Part 4 of Article 185 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Currently, a pre-trial investigation into this matter is underway.

At the PrivatBank branch, the woman was provided with a statement of account activity for April 17, 2022, which indicates that funds were withdrawn from her account through four transactions, specifically, 500 hryvnias were spent on entertainment, followed by another 500 hryvnias for entertainment, 24,999 hryvnias for entertainment, and 15,999 hryvnias for entertainment. Subsequently, 1,800 hryvnias were transferred from her other account. In a letter dated July 26, 2022, the bank informed her that it could not return the funds.

"As a result of the internal investigation, it was established that all transactions were conducted online on a third-party website with the correct manual entry of information, which allowed for the initiation of payment operations using the card: the individual card number (a unique combination of 16 digits); the card's expiration date; the card's security code (CVV code, 3 digits on the back of the card, for conducting operations online); and the internet payment code - 3-D Secure (the confirmation code for online transactions was sent through the Privat-24 app). The actions of entering the information that enabled the initiation of payment operations on April 17, 2022, could only have been performed by the cardholder using a financial phone to access the plaintiff's electronic cabinet "Privat-24." Thus, on April 17, 2022, four payments were made, initiated by the plaintiff, totaling 41,998 hryvnias. Therefore, the fault of JSC "PrivatBank" in the execution of transactions from the plaintiff's accounts is absent, and accordingly, there are no grounds for the plaintiff to claim funds from JSC "PrivatBank," - stated PrivatBank.

What did the court decide?

The court partially satisfied the woman's claim. Funds amounting to 43,798 hryvnias will be recovered from the joint-stock commercial bank "PrivatBank" in her favor, of which 42,000 hryvnias are credit funds and 1,798 hryvnias are personal funds, to be credited to the specified amount to the bank account opened at JSC "PrivatBank."

"The court concluded that the defendant JSC "PrivatBank" did not confirm with proper and admissible evidence the circumstances that indisputably prove that the plaintiff, as a user of bank cards, facilitated access to the information on the cards, her personal accounts, the unlawful use of the PIN code, or other information that allowed for the initiation of payment operations on April 17, 2022, involving the transfer of funds totaling 42,000 hryvnias and 1,800 hryvnias from her card accounts," - emphasized the court.