Over the last two years, Flutterwave made headlines for being smack dab in the face of regulators. In Kenya, the courts froze $55 million of Flutterwave’s funds over fraud and money laundering claims in 2022. The case was withdrawn and Flutterwave recovered $52.5 million in March 2023, with $3 million left.
The same regulators set the fintech free last week when a Kenyan high court unfroze the $3 million belonging to the fintech giant and two of its associates, ending the legal wrangle.
Now Flutterwave is focused on recovering lost funds in Nigeria.
The fintech unicorn has received a second court order from a Lagos court, ordering 27 banks to unfreeze accounts tied to its 2023 hack of $1.9 million.
This follows a court order last week to recover $24 million lost through unauthorised transactions by point of sale (PoS) merchants on October 10, 2023.
In March 2023, Flutterwave denied reports that hackers stole $1.9 million of customer funds from its account in February 2023. In its response to the story, Flutterwave said it noticed unusual activities in its systems and told users to activate safety protocols. While Flutterwave insisted that customers did not lose any funds, it scrambled to freeze accounts and initiate legal action in February 2023.
As the Fintech company continued to pursue legal action, in April 2023, Flutterwave reportedly denied a second and third breach on March 1 and 14 respectively, which was estimated to be about $365,448. Many of the account holders affected were cryptocurrency merchants who claimed that the money was moved from Flutterwave’s accounts, and used to buy USDT on crypto platform Binance.
One year after the $1.9 million hack, and many other hacks, Flutterwave seems to still be recouping some lost funds. However, two banks— Access Bank and Providus Bank—allegedly remain defiant, refusing to comply with the court order to unfreeze accounts.
