Greek central bank

The online hacktivist Anonymous relaunched operation OpIcarus targeting banking sector in Europe and the United States.

The Bank of Greece had their website under a series of distributed denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) forcing the servers to remain offline for more than 6 hours.

The European Central Bank lowered the cap on emergency liquidity assistance (ELA) Greek banks draw from the domestic central bank by 0.5 billion euros to 69.4 billion euros ($78.7 billion), the Bank of Greece said on Thursday.

Greece needs to show a strong commitment to its bailout program before the European Central Bank can start buying Greek debt as part of its asset purchase program, ECB’s president Mario Draghi said in a letter on Wednesday replying to a question of SYRIZA MEPs Dimitris Papadimoulis and Stelios Kouloglou.

Qatar National Bank (QNB), the Gulf Arab region's largest bank, has agreed to buy Turkey's Finansbank from the National Bank of Greece (NBG) for 2.7 billion euros ($2.95 billion), as it steps up its search for larger markets overseas. With the latest acquisition, Qatari companies have strengthened their hands in the Turkish market. 

Qatar National Bank SAQ , the Gulf Arab region's largest bank, reached an agreement with National Bank of Greece to acquire the latter's entire 99.81 percent stake in Turkey's Finansbank for 2.7 billion euros ($2.95 billion), the two banks said on Dec. 22.

A double cyber attack on Greek banks has been taking place with precision over four days. A group of hackers has launched therats against the e-banking systems of three Greek banks seeking a ransom in bitcoin. Meanwhile, there are leaks of Greek debit and credit card data that  have been used for transactions with the United States in recent days.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Sunday announced a bank holiday and capital controls in Greece after Greeks responded to his surprise call for a referendum on bailout terms by pulling money out of banks.

Tsipras blamed European partners and the European Central Bank for forcing Greece?s hand but said that would not halt the plan to hold a referendum next Sunday.

The European Central Bank (ECB) is expected to end its emergency lending to Greek banks at the forthcoming meeting of its governing council on Sunday.

According to sources, Greece will probably have to "announce bank holiday on Monday, pending the introduction of capital controls", the BBC reports.

By Paul Gordon

European Central Bank President Mario Draghi is convening his Governing Council on Sunday for an extraordinary meeting to discuss Greece.

The European Central Bank (ECB) approved the amount of emergency funding (ELA) that Athens had requested for its banks on Thursday said a banking source.

“The Bank of Greece got approval for the ELA it requested. If necessary, the ECB Governing Council will convene again over the next 24 hours,” said the source without revealing the exact amount of funding.