AHSA, 18 May 2007 — A Saudi high school student was shocked to check his bank account by ATM one day and discover a balance of SR3 billion ($800 million) — the only problem was that the account was also frozen. According to a report in Al-Jazirah newspaper yesterday, the student said friends — and even people who weren’t friends — came out of the woodwork when they heard about his “fortune”, reminding him to keep them in mind when he began spending his money. The only problem was, of course, this was an electronic mistake and the student had no way of actually withdrawing the cash. Now he wants to sue the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency to unfreeze his account. He claims that the freeze made him miss out on some lucrative stock investing as the bank tried to work through its mistake. Obviously the young man hasn’t been paying attention to the performance of the stock market, which has been bearish since the beginning of the year. If anything, the bank freeze probably saved the kid some money.
