Riječka Banka lost $100M on unauthorized FX trades — a rogue trader in Croatia

Riječka Banka (Rijeka Bank) was a Croatian bank based in Rijeka, one of the country's major regional banks. The bank was a relatively small institution by international standards, primarily serving the Croatian market.

In 2002, the bank discovered that it had lost $100 million through unauthorized foreign exchange trading by Eduard Nodilo, a trader who had been making speculative FX bets without proper authorization. The losses were substantial relative to the bank's size, threatening its financial stability.

The case was one of several rogue trader incidents in European banks during the early 2000s, where inadequate internal controls allowed individual traders to build up large unauthorized positions. The bank eventually had to be restructured and was later acquired by Erste Bank, with the unauthorized trading losses cited as a contributing factor to its weakened financial position.