Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
The government of Bangladesh has rejected an offer from Philrem to return more than P10 million it earned in handling the $81 million stolen fund from Bangladesh Bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The $81 million stolen fund was transferred to the Philippines Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) from the Federal Reserve Bank in early February.
Philrem is a Remittance Company in the Philippines.
“Bangladesh has rejected the offer. Of course they are not interested in the P10 million. They are interested in recovering the $81 million,” Senator Serge Osmeña III said in a television interview on Monday, according to a report of The Philippine Star.
At Thursday’s Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on the money laundering scandal, Philrem’s owner Salud Bautista said they would return the entire amount they earned from handling the fund to the Bangladesh ambassador in Manila.
“We will prepare a check. It will represent every centavo our company earned from this series of transactions. We will be returning P10,474,654,” she said. She apologized for her company’s involvement in handling the stolen funds. It was “unintended,” she said. The $81 million allegedly stolen by Chinese hackers was transferred to four accounts in RCBC-Jupiter (Makati) branch, then to an account supposedly owned by businessman William So Go, then to Philrem, which delivered the bulk of the funds in pesos to Solaire Resort and Casino and Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co.
When contacted, Subhankar Saha, an Executive Director and spokesperson for the BB, told The New Nation on Tuesday that they are not aware about the matter because there might be a government to government negotiation in this regard.”There might be a negotiation through the diplomatic channels. But the BB has no information in this regard,” he added.Subhankar Saha said, BB is going through its own way and keeping close contact with the Philippines central bank and Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMCL) to recover the stolen fund.
On top of this, the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) is also working on the issue as it had a deal with the Philippines counterpart to bring back any laundered money.
“The BFIU is looking into the matter following proper procedures,” he said.
Referring to the interview of Senator Serge Osmeña III, the BB spokesperson, “It’s a petty amount… we cannot accept it. We want to get back the full amount.”
