The Japanese banking unit of US financial giant Citigroup said today that a magnetic tape containing information on over 120,000 of its customer accounts had gone missing in Singapore.
The back-up tape, which had monthly transaction data on 123,690 Citibank customer accounts in Japan, went missing on February 21st while a local security company was transporting it, the Japanese unit of Citibank said in a statement.
It was not clear if anyone had had access to the data.
Citibank said it believed the incident was an accident and not linked to any criminal activity.
It said the tape was equipped with security features to prevent unauthorised access and did not have data that would allow a third party to use an account for transactions.
Citibank reported the incident to Japan's Financial Services Agency (FSA) soon after it found out about the incident and had been in regular contact with the authorities, a Citibank spokesman said.