Kazi Zahidul Hasan :Two officials of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) reached Manila on Sunday to assist the Bangladesh Ambassador to the Philippines in recovering BB’s $81 million heist fund.On the other hand, a three-member team of Criminal Investigation Department (CID) is scheduled to leave soon for Manila to investigate the money laundering case. The BB team will also visit the Philippines Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and attend the fourth hearing of the Senate Blue Ribbon committee on Tuesday, officials said.Bangladesh Ambassador to the Philippines John Gomes told the local media that the two teams would dig deeper into the case, in coordination with the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and AMCL.”They will start their own investigation on how the money entered that country and who are the people involved,” Gomes said after witnessing the turnover of $4.63 million by casino junket operator Kim Wong to the AMLC office at BSP headquarters in Manila.”We are hopeful that the entire amount will be recovered. The return of $4.63 million from Wong is a step in the right direction,” he added.He said the Bangladesh government hopes that Wong would return another P450 million that was part of the P1 billion brought in by two Chinese casino players.Gomes said the Bangladesh government would also pursue the $17 million left with Philrem Services owned by the Bautista family as alleged by Wong.”We hope to recover the rest of the amount,” he added. The Bangladesh envoy thanked the Senate, the AMLC and the BSP for their help in efforts to recover the money stolen from the account of the BB at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last February.The money entered the country via the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) and found its way to two casinos.The officials were sent to Philippines as part of the BB’s “coordinated effort” to recover the heist fund,” Subhankar Saha, a spokesman of BB, told The New Nation on Sunday evening.He added, “Our officials will stay in Manila for one week for providing different supports to the ambassador for expediting the overall recovery process of the stolen money from the Philippines”.Regarding the steps taken by the Philippines authorities, Subhankar Saha said, the money-laundering scheme is under investigation by the country’s Senate Blue Ribbon Committee, central bank and the AMLC. “We are now exchanging information relating to the cyber heist with its counterparts in the Philippines for recovering the stolen fund,” the BB official said. A senior CID official talking to The New Nation said that their team would try to identify perpetrators of the digital crimes. The CID team is likely to stay in the Philippines for more than a week for investigation, the official added.
