Staff Reporter :
The Philippines Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) on Tuesday fired its Jupiter branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito and her Deputy Angela Torres for their alleged link with the $81 million crossborder money laundering scheme.The bank claimed that Deguito and Torres had breached the rules and facilitated the alleged laundering of $81 million of remittance now being investigated by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and other government agencies like the Anti-Money Laundering Council, reports Inquirer.net.
“The two top officials Jupiter branch have violated of bank policies and procedures as well as falsification of commercial documents for facilitating the alleged laundering of $81 million from Bangladesh central bank account prompting the bank authorities to take the action,” RCBC Counsel Macel Fernandez-Estavillo said in a statement.
The termination was effective from Tuesday.
The lawyer also said that other branch and bank officials are expected to be meted out various sanctions ranging from termination to suspension in the coming days when the internal investigation is expected to be completed. “Appropriate charges in court will be filed by the bank against Deguito and Torres by next week,” Estavillo said.
Meanwhile, the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) of Philippines has filed charges against businessmen Kim Wong and Weikang Xu for their alleged involvement in the banking heist.
Both the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and AMCL are now trying to figure out how $81 million hacked money from the New York Federal Reserve account of Bangladesh’s central bank entered into their financial system and wound up with two casinos and a junket operator in the Philippines – and then disappeared.
Public hearings on the heist in the Philippines’ Senate last week focused on the Jupiter branch manager of RCBC.
Her bank received the stolen money on February 4 and transferred it to a foreign exchange broker who passed it on in tranches, including $30 million in banknotes that officials say would have weighed 1,500 kg.
A colleague of the manager testified he saw her drive off in her car with 20 million pesos ($431,000) in cash from one of several fictitious accounts to which the money was wired. The branch manager declined to give evidence in public.
According to media reports, on February 8 BB sent RCBC several messages via the SWIFT interbank communications network requesting transactions be stopped and the funds returned.
However, five withdrawals were made from the accounts in 73 minutes the next morning. When RCBC responded to the SWIFT message later that day, all that remained of the $81 million was $68,305.
