A worker at HSBC's Bangalore call centre has been arrested on suspicion of selling the confidential bank account details of UK customers to fraudsters.
Data worker Nadeem Kashmiri, 24, has been charged with hacking into computers and breaching confidentiality agreements and privacy laws.
According to press reports around £233,000 was stolen from the accounts of 16 UK customers after Kashmiri allegedly sold bank details to fraudsters while working at the centre in Bangalore.
The fraud was detected by internal systems at the call centre, which had been in place since 2002.
A spokesman for HSBC told reporters that all affected customers had been notified and refunded and the bank intends to "pursue a conviction as aggressively as possible".
But the incident raises new fears about the security of customer data at offshore centres and follows a number of high-profile breaches last year.
In June a call centre worker in India allegedly sold the bank account details of 1000 British customers to an undercover reporter working for UK daily tabloid The Sun, while in August, an undercover investigation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Four Corners programme has found that call centre workers in India are offering to sell personal financial records held in the databases of Australian companies.
Earlier in the year, three former employees of Indian BPO firm MphasiS were arrested for allegedly siphoning off $300,000 from Citibank customers after stealing account details while working at an offshore call centre in India.