InterAksyon.com, MANILA :The hackers behind the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh central bank were not Filipino or Bangladeshi, John Gomes, the Ambassador of the foreign country to the Philippines, said.”I cannot disclose at this point the findings, but I learned that it is not a Bangladeshi who hacked, it is not Filipino,” Gomes told ImteAksyon.com in an interview. “It is someone from another (country). I’m not able to disclose who it is, what is very sure from certain track record of the persons is it’s not Filipino or Bangladeshi,” he said.Gomes said that people from the Bangladesh central bank are being investigated to find out if there were some involved in what was touted as the world’s biggest heist.He said it was not possible for someone to be inside the bank at the time of the incident, since it was a Friday, a day of prayer for the Bangladesh people.”In Bangladesh on a Friday, everyone has to go to the mosque to pray . . . so there’s no question that on a Friday someone is inside the bank and doing it. I wish we could find out who these people are,” he said.On Tuesday, April 19, the Senate blue ribbon committee will resume its inquiry on the missing money, which was stolen from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in early February and funneled it through the Jupiter Street, Makati branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) to casinos and gambling operators in the Philippines. Gomes expressed confidence that the senators “are trying to find out exactly what happened.”He also said he was leaving it up to Philippine banking regulators to determine the responsibility of RCBC for allowing the release of the $81 million in several tranches through the bogus bank accounts.The envoy noted that a total of $101 million dollars was the subject of payments transfers — $81 million to the Philippines through RCBC and $20 million to a foundation in Sri Lanka through the Pan Asia bank, but the latter was able to stop the transfer of payment.In a report by Reuters, the four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the Philippines went through, but a fifth, amounting to $20 million, to a non-profit foundation in Sri Lanka, was stopped because the hackers misspelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation.Instead of foundation, the hackers put “fandation,” prompting the routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transfer.During last week’s hearing at the Senate, the legal counsel of RCBC admitted receiving four requests for stop payment and freeze order on February 9 and 10 from Bangladesh Bank to halt the transactions involving the $81 million.Maria Cecilia Estavillo, RCBC head of legal and regulatory affairs, described the messages, which were among the 790 messages received by the bank through the Swift system, as “normal priority” messages and were “vague.”Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) provides a network that enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions in a secure, standardized, and reliable environment. Gomes, however, said he believes that Swift messages “were very clear.” “If you compare Sri Lanka (Pan Asia) and RCBC, it appears like they could stop the payments, but here, RCBC receives the payment and it eventually disappears,” he said.”The legal system will determine what RCBC would have done. I can only make judgment on something which has happened in Sri Lanka,” he added.
