Turkish to English Bus/Financial Finance (general)

In the following context, the term 'hayatına karşılık' makes no sense to me.

A bank employee tried to help his friend, a small businessman who was in financial difficulty, by embezzling money from customers' accounts at his branch, hoping to return the money after his friend had made a profit from it. In a report in which this bank employee's statement about this affair is summarised, we find:

"...süreç içerisinde ....... TL'yi adı geçene - üçüncü kişilere olan borcuna istinaden ve hayatına karşılık - elden verdiğini ... ifade etmiştir"

OK, so the money he was passing on was based on debt to third parties, i.e. the money he was taking from other people's accounts and wanted to pay back, but why was this in return for his life? The expression makes no sense to me in this context, and I know that both of the people involved were alive at the time the report was written, so nobody paid with their life for this. I can't help feeling that this is a source text error of some kind, but if anybody can help me to make sense of this, I would be grateful.