Kazi Zahidul Hasan :An unknown group of hackers has stolen around $100 million from a reserve account of Bangladesh Bank (BB) held with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.The hackers had illegally transferred the amount to a Philippines bank on February 5 using ‘Malware’ and later a portion of it also transferred to the banking system of Sri Lanka, officials said on Monday. ‘Malware’ is a variety of hostile or intrusive software that can disrupt computer operations, gather sensitive information and data, gain access to computer systems and display unwanted advertising.Confirming the matter, Suvankar Shaha, an Executive Director of BB told The New Nation on Monday night that the cyber criminals transferred the sum to the Philippines banks after hacking information of the reserve account. “We are negotiating with the Philippines authorities to bring back the transferred reserve,” he said, adding, “BB will be able to recover the laundered reserve from the Philippines under the cover of anti-money laundering deal signed between Bangladesh and Philippines.” BB earlier sent two of its officials to the Philippines to investigate the matter and bring back the amount.BB has around $28 billion in foreign currency reserve, 30 per cent of the reserve remains in the form of liquid asset and the rest of it is invested in bonds and gold in various banks and financial institutions of developed countries.Another BB official said that a portion of $100 million had later been transferred to Sri Lanka. But he declined to confirm the amount. “BB later recovered the amount after holding negotiation with the Lankan authorities,” he added. The central bank, in a statement issued on Monday afternoon, however, claimed that a portion of $100 million has already been recovered.It added that Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), an anti-money laundering arm of BB, is in contact with authorities of the Philippines to recover and trace the rest of the amount. BB in its statement, however, did not make any explanation how the hackers could have been able to transfer the amount.The news was first leaked by a Philippines based online news portal “inquirer.net” on February 28. It said that a total of $100 million that was brought into the country’s (Philippines) banking system through a transaction of Makati City branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp handled by one of its branch managers with foreign exchange broker Philrem. “It is that some funds went missing in Bangladesh and the suspicion is that this bank-or the central bank of that country, itself-was hit by hackers based in China. The banking regulator of Bangladesh (BB) was investigating the matter what could be the biggest single money laundering activity ever uncovered in the Philippines,” according to the report. Investigators in the Philippines found that in the series of incidents, a total of around $100 million that was brought into the country’s banking system, were sold to a black market foreign exchange broker, transferred to at least three large local casinos, sold back to the money broker, and moved out to overseas accounts – all in a few days. “Once converted into pesos, the funds were consolidated from five individual bank accounts into a single corporate account of a Chinese-Filipino businessman who runs a ‘junket operation’ flying in high networth gamblers from overseas to play in local casinos,” the report said.The report also said that the funds are owned by a Macau-based client of the junket operator and these funds were used to either ‘buy chips’ or ‘pay for casino losses’ incurred at Solaire Resort and Casino, City of Dreams Manila and Midas Hotel and Casino.Later, the concerned authorities of the Philippines filed a case in this regard and got an order from a court there to freeze those accounts involved in laundering the hacked money.
