Alexander Higgins Blog
June 11, 2012
By Alexander Higgins
 Fuori servizio = out of service |
"Financial difficulties" force Bank Network Investments
SpA (BNI) to begin a Bank-of-Italy-authorized freeze
on all customer accounts.
On May 31st Bank Network Investments discretely posted
an announcement on their website
(screenshot, IT, EN),
that they would be freezing all of their customers' accounts
for a 1-month freeze on citing financial difficulties. The
announcement was posted and the bank gave customers
7 days to act, before the Bank-of-Italy-approved freeze
went into effect.
The bank’s customers are saying, they were completely
unaware of the notice being posted and are just now
finding out about it, when they go to the bank or the ATM
for the first time. The media certainly hasn’t reported on it
and news of the freeze is only now starting to make its
way around the Internet, after a complaint was posted on
the popular Italian consumer rights website Adiconsum
along with a photo of a shutdown ATM.
The freezing of the customer’s deposits — in a nation, that apparently doesn’t have a mechanism, like the FDIC, to insure customer deposits against losses — has sent shockwaves of terror across Italy, raising fears, that other customers will lose their deposits entirely.
In turn, speculation is growing, that other banks in Italy and across Europe may soon suffer the same fate, as European officials announce, they are planning ATM and bank withdrawal restrictions to deal with a Greece exit from the euro.
A Google News search shows no corporate news reports on the web. A Google web search shows only a series of blogs and forums discussing the story, that I am reporting on now.