DHAKA — Bangladesh鈥檚 central bank was to send a team of officials to the Philippines on Tuesday to push for the recovery of more of the $81 million stolen from its account at the New York Federal Reserve last year and routed through a bank in Manila.
Bangladesh Bank has been able to retrieve only about $15 million of the money stolen in one of the world鈥檚 biggest cyber heists.
A Bangladesh Bank lawyer, Ajmalul Hossain, told Reuters on Monday the bank was working on 鈥渧arious ways鈥 to get back the rest of the money from institutions in the Philippines.
Mr. Hossain said two officials from Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit, controlled by the central bank, would meet representatives of the Philippine Department of Justice, Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and a presidential commission, among others.
鈥淎ll the money that was lost has been frozen鈥 we鈥檙e trying to expedite the process of recovery,鈥 Mr. Hossain told Reuters by telephone from London.
He declined to give details of the strategy to recover the money from the heist, which according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation was state-sponsored.
On the evening of Feb. 4 last year, yet-to-be-identified hackers initiated fake transfer orders which sought to move nearly $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank鈥檚 New York Fed account mostly to accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC).
Many of the transfer orders initiated by the hackers were blocked or reversed by intermediary banks, but $81 million made it to accounts in fake names at RCBC. Most of the funds then disappeared into Manila鈥檚 loosely regulated casino industry.
The Philippines鈥 AMLC has accused several RCBC officials of money-laundering in a complaint filed at its Justice department, though the bank has blamed only a couple of rogue officials.
RCBC was fined a record P1 billion by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for its failure to prevent the movement of the loot through its bank, while a top Bangladeshi investigator has said he suspected some IT technicians from the Dhaka-based bank helped the hackers carry out the heist.
The $15 million that Bangladesh has so far recovered is part of $35 million that casino boss Kim Wong had told a Philippines Senate inquiry he received from two Chinese gamblers without knowing it was stolen. — Reuters
