Special Correspondent :
Today is the second anniversary of Bangladesh Bank’s Reserve heist.
Unidentified hackers stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the New York Fed on February 4, 2016, using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system.
The money was sent to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and then disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines. RCBC was fined a record one billion pesos ($20 million) by the country’s central bank in 2016 for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through it.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) has been able to retrieve only about $15 million out of the total stolen fund despite repeated assurance from the Philippine government and an international probe involving the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
But there is a little hope in recovering $66 million more from Philippines as the process plunged into the country’s lengthy legal systems along with RCBC’s denial to compensate BB for funneling the fund through it.
BB Governor Dr Fazle Kabir however expressed his hope to get back the fund from Philippines saying legal process is underway to settle the issue.
“We will soon receive $1.2 million more from the Philippines as part of the process to retrieve the money stolen from bank’s foreign reserve account,” Governor Dr Fazle Kabir told reporters while announcing the new monetary policy at the bank’s headquarters in Dhaka on Monday.
He said Bangladesh has so far recovered $14.54 million of the $81 million stolen money. The process to retrieve $50 million more is still going through the court proceedings in the Philippines.
“The process of recovering $1.2 million from the Philippines is now at the final stage while significant progress was made in retrieving another $6 million,” said Kabir.
A team of officials of Bangladesh Bank and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) now in Manila to complete the formalities to get back the portion ($1.2 million of the money.
“We previously discussed the matter of recovering the money with the Philippine government several times. We were assured that the money will be returned but they are lingering on it. That is why we are thinking about legal action against RCBC,” a senior BB official told The New Nation yesterday.
He added, “We will file a civil suit along with the Fed and SWIFT to recover the money.”
Today is the second anniversary of Bangladesh Bank’s Reserve heist.
Unidentified hackers stole $81 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the New York Fed on February 4, 2016, using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system.
The money was sent to accounts at Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and then disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines. RCBC was fined a record one billion pesos ($20 million) by the country’s central bank in 2016 for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through it.
Bangladesh Bank (BB) has been able to retrieve only about $15 million out of the total stolen fund despite repeated assurance from the Philippine government and an international probe involving the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
But there is a little hope in recovering $66 million more from Philippines as the process plunged into the country’s lengthy legal systems along with RCBC’s denial to compensate BB for funneling the fund through it.
BB Governor Dr Fazle Kabir however expressed his hope to get back the fund from Philippines saying legal process is underway to settle the issue.
“We will soon receive $1.2 million more from the Philippines as part of the process to retrieve the money stolen from bank’s foreign reserve account,” Governor Dr Fazle Kabir told reporters while announcing the new monetary policy at the bank’s headquarters in Dhaka on Monday.
He said Bangladesh has so far recovered $14.54 million of the $81 million stolen money. The process to retrieve $50 million more is still going through the court proceedings in the Philippines.
“The process of recovering $1.2 million from the Philippines is now at the final stage while significant progress was made in retrieving another $6 million,” said Kabir.
A team of officials of Bangladesh Bank and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) now in Manila to complete the formalities to get back the portion ($1.2 million of the money.
“We previously discussed the matter of recovering the money with the Philippine government several times. We were assured that the money will be returned but they are lingering on it. That is why we are thinking about legal action against RCBC,” a senior BB official told The New Nation yesterday.
He added, “We will file a civil suit along with the Fed and SWIFT to recover the money.”
