Kazi Zahidul Hasan :The Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Tuesday said that it had no evidence of any breach of its systems related to an account held there by Bangladesh Bank (BB).The denial by the US Federal Reserve Bank that any Bangladesh government’s fund deposited with it has not been stolen has further complicated the issue as raised by the BB.BB. the apex bank of Bangladesh, on Monday said that its account held with the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York had been hacked and $100 million had been stolen from it.The theft occurred on February 5.”To date, there is no evidence of any attempt to penetrate Federal Reserve systems in connection with the payments in question, and there is no evidence that any Fed systems were compromised,” Andrea Priest, a spokeswoman of the bank said in response to queries about the claim.Some 250 central banks, governments and other institutions have foreign accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They hold mostly US Treasuries and agency debt.Reacting on the Federal Reserve’s denial, Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday said that the money had been stolen from their custody and as custodian they are responsible to get safety of the fund.He said the government will file a case against the Federal Reserve Bank if it continues to deny the theft by some unidentified hackers.”The Federal Reserve Bank cannot avoid its responsibility in any way, and of course a case will be filed against it,” Muhith said while talking to reporters at his Finance Ministry office on Wednesday noon. Replying to a question, the Finance Minister said, “BB will give explanation about the funds hacked from its foreign exchange reserve in US, but the central bank has no fault regarding the hacked funds on February 5.”Echoing with the Finance Minister, a senior BB official requesting anonymity told The New nation that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be sued following the hacking of around $100 million from BB’s foreign currency account. “BB is getting ready to take legal actions against the Federal Reserve Bank to recover the money, which was stolen from the Fed account in the United States,” he added. “Almost the entire amount was transferred online to the Philippines banking system after breaching the Federal Reserve Bank’s payment system. We have concrete evidences in this regard,” he clamed.The BB official further said that there was previous evidence of breaching Federal Reserve Bank’s servers by the hackers. A British citizen was accused in 2014 for hacking its servers and posting private data. When asked, he also said that BB is in touch with the Filipino authorities to trace how the money was laundered to the Philippines banking system. Later, some portion of the stolen money was diverted to Sri Lanka. “A small portion of the stolen money has already been recovered from Sri Lanka. But the money, which is in the Philippines, is yet to be recovered,” he added.Replying to a question, the BB official said, Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) had remained active with anti-money laundering authorities of the Philippines to recover and get back rest of the money. The anti-money laundering authorities of the Philippines had also filed a case regarding the incident and had started collecting information about all the frozen bank accounts related to the hacking incident.”Legal steps would be taken once the Philippines anti-money laundering authorities concluded their investigation into the incident,” said the BB official, adding that if necessary, it would engage the Stolen Assets Recovery (StAR) of the World Bank (WB).He also said that an expert and a forensic investigation team of the WB have been working with the BFIU team over the incident.Despite its official denial, the Federal Reserve Bank, however, launched an official investigation in this regard.
