RF CB FPS: the choice of fraudsters
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| Fast Payment System of the Bank of Russia #AlfaBankFraud |
Originally
published in Russian as “СБП ЦБ РФ—выбор мошенников” here.
This is the
next instalment in my series of posts about fraud at Alfa Bank. My previous one
in this series is here.
Initially I
wanted to call this post something like “The Bank of Russia's Fast Payment
System: fraudsters' dream come true” because before it went online they had to
steal money in chunks up to RUR15k through anonymous accounts with online
banks, and the FPS has presumably raised this limit to RUR100k, and possibly
has removed it altogether. In my case, the swindlers would have had to talk me
into making 12 transfers in order to debit my Alfa Bank account to the tune of
RUR176k, and this was hardly doable for them for a number of reasons. But on
second thoughts I decided that I did not yet have sufficient reason to describe
the FPS as fraudsters' dream come true, and I came up with another title, one
that is strictly true. Let us, however, start at the beginning.
This is all
good and praiseworthy, but personally I fail to understand who, other than
fraudsters, crooks and other criminals, would need INSTANTANEOUS payments. To
be sure, these are indispensable for exchange trading, where even a fraction of
a second sometimes makes a difference, but exchanges have their own payment
systems in place for this purpose, but why would anybody want such warp speed
in everyday bank transfers or payments for purchases? Payment systems based on
bank cards or e-wallets seem to do the job well enough, taking a couple of
minutes to process a transaction for purposes of purchasing goods or services,
while providing adequate fraud protection by delaying the actual money transfer
to the seller. I am not an expert, however, and my opinion carries no weight.
Aware as I am of this, I turned to experts for advice.
On the
banki.ru forum, where I started a thread on the subject,
the user slowpoke commented on the issue as follows: “The FPS is like a toilet.
If you flush something down the drain, you'll never see it again”. He goes on
to expand on this idea: “Because 161-FZ [Federal Act No 161] states that a bank
may not proceed with a transfer if a customer files a fraud report with the
bank before the transfer goes through, there are judgments rendered by Russian
courts on C2C [card-to-card/consumer-to-consumer] transfers ordering banks to
make the injured parties whole. Because C2C transfers are made with a lag as
required by MPS [International Payment System]. So the CB, as the architect of
the FPS, cites the instantaneity of transfer as one of its
"benefits", making it impossible to challenge in court. In other
words, they have put in place a perfect mechanism for fraudsters and take pride
in this”. So we do have some reason to believe that the FPS was “commissioned”
by fraudsters.
It seems,
however, important to find out in this context whether there is after all any
mechanism in place to delay the withdrawal of stolen money from the accounts of
recipients of instantaneous payments through the FPS pending a determination on
the validity of the transactions, or, alternatively, to conclude that the FPS
is indeed a “toilet”, a “black hole”, from where nothing comes back. In its
communications to me (by telephone and at the bank's branch), Alfa Bank claims
to have no such mechanism available to them.
Specifically,
in a call with an Alfa Bank operator recorded by me 02.07.20,
she said (4m50s into the recording) in response to my question as to whether
anything had been done to stop the disbursement of funds at Gazprombank that “we
can't do this; only the police can do this when you make a statement”. Note,
however, that in its response to an enquiry from the Bank of Russia in
connection with my letter to
the RF President, which had been forwarded there by the Presidential Executive
Office to be examined on the merits, Alfa Bank did not use such a reasonable
excuse for not recrediting my account, but put forward an entirely different
version, which will be covered in my next post.
Unfortunately,
the RF CB ignored my question regarding this issue in their responses to my
complaint and my letter to the RF President. In its
response to my complaint, for example, it
merely said the following: “Lending institutions transfer funds as instructed
by customers. The instructions can be recalled before the funds are debited to
the payer's bank account or the payer provides cash money (for transfers other
than from a bank account) – that is, before a transfer of funds becomes
irrevocable (cl. 7, art. 5 of Federal Law No 161-FZ, ‘On the national payment
system’, and cl. 1.1 of Bank of Russia Regulation No 383-P, ‘On remittance
rules’)”. It is not clear, how the term “becoming irrevocable” applies here if
debits in the FPS are instantaneous, becoming final and irrevocable, if we are
to believe Alfa Bank and slowpoke, the moment the payer clicks or taps for the
last time, but possibly the CB bankers find the whole thing quite natural,
reasonable and useful.
Yet I'm
willing to agree that this can indeed be the case – PROVIDED payers are
adequately warned of the dire consequences for them should they happen to make
a single mistake, error or slip-up, however slight, when formulating
their instructions. But any warning to this effect would have made such fraud
impossible in all likelihood—and this is probably the very reason why Alfa Bank
made sure that none is made anywhere, as I stated in my earlier posts.
In
conclusion, I have to admit that I will apparently have no other course of
action, if I am forced to take legal action, but to file a lawsuit against the
Bank of Russia and Alfa Bank as co-defendants and ask the court to apportion
liability between them for a violation of my rights as a consumer and
depositor, if such is found to be the case. #AlfaBankFraud
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