Editorial Desk: The mystery behind the stealing of US$ 101 million from Bangladesh Bank account with Federal Reserves in New York is yet to be resolved. CID and other intelligence units are trying to unearth the identity of persons who may have facilitated the heist from within Bangladesh Bank. It is almost certain that some people inside the central bank created the space for cyber thieves to know the money transfer system first before they put the electronic transfer orders. Who may be those culprits to have joined hands with cyber thieves from abroad?Meanwhile a CID team is also planning to visit Philippines next week to know more about the people who were involved from the other side of the money heist. Many wonder what role a law officer of the Attorney General Office may have in it. Bangladesh Ambassador is enough to take care of the matter on the Philippines side. But question arises when the thieves are hiding with all probability inside Bangladesh Bank, why there is so haste to go on a visit to Philippines to look for the thieves. In our view the thieves are here, our money was stolen using the computers here and we must identify and catch them here. The Philippines government will catch their thieves. In fact the central bank of Philippines and that country’s Anti-Money Laundering Council have already initiated action against banks and cyber thieves. They will do their job; we must expedite our search here. Any foreign visit to nab the culprits may be justified only when our local investigations will probe that there is no culprits sitting under cover. There is no justification to take up expensive trip abroad at this moment. There is also plan to visit USA and Sri Lanka by the probe committee, which however appears giving the visiting opportunity to many wasting state money exploiting the case. Moreover when the Philippines government has already said almost all money has ended in the casinos and there is no scope to retrieve it, there is no justification of such visit as well. The Senate blue ribbon committee of the Philippines on hearing the case last week has observed that there is a clear link between BCRC Bank and the cyber thieves on their end. Similarly there is a quite legitimate suspicion in Bangladesh that these thieves also acted with thieves inside Bangladesh Bank to commit the heist.What is important is why the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Finance is not opening hearing on the money heist, which has not only caused huge loss of fund, but also lost the country’s image as an incapable nation failing to protect its wealth.In our view the hearing by the Standing Committee is overdue and there is a big question why such initiative is not in sight. The Philippines Senate has done it, why not our Parliamentary Body is taking interest in it. News reports said, CID has seized 50 computers which were used by officers in the back office of the dealing room of the accounts and budget departments, foreign exchange transfer departments, security and information technology departments of Bangladesh Bank. They are conducting forensic tests of the computers in which some other technical service providers are also cooperating. Preliminary revelations showed cyber thieves installed suspicious malware into Bangladesh Bank’s operational system on January 24. Then on January 29, they installed an advanced background monitor into the system and carried test run to see how it operates and how the transfer order will be carried out. They use three sophisticated tolls into the SWIFT operational system, which is highly secretive to make payment orders. It is not understandable why serious efforts are not being made to catch our thieves for knowing the whole truth? Instead the government is organising foreign trips and arranging legal action abroad. For any legal action, we have to prove our innocence. So first catch our thieves.
