Staff Reporter :It is clear that around a billion US dollar has been targeted from Bangladesh Bank account held with Federal Reserve Bank of New York and all fingers are pointed at Bangladesh Bank officials at head office in Dhaka as to how the authorization of the transfer was made to Federal Reserves to make payments. Bangladesh Bank officials now claim it was based on mis-instructions but how around 35 such instructions were messaged by responsible official at central bank is the biggest question. Initially Bangladesh Bank officials held the Federal Reserves responsible for the payment but the Reserves immediately declined to accept the blame saying they made the transfer with due authorization from Bangladesh Bank.It was about US$ 100 million at first blamed on hackers but subsequent disclosure said additional US$ 870 million were on curd to transfer to some banks in the Philippines, which were however blocked now by that country’s central bank.A spokeswoman for the New York Fed reiterated on Tuesday that the bank had no evidence of a breach of its systems related to an account held there by Bangladesh’s central bank. She said Fed officials were in touch with Bangladesh Bank.”The payment instructions in question were fully authenticated by the Swift messaging system in accordance with standard authentication protocols,” the New York Fed spokeswoman said. “There is no indication that our network has been compromised.” Swift uses a multilayered process to authenticate the financial institutions that are sending and receiving millions of messages each day between one another,” Fed’s spokesper son Natasha de Teran said. Ekattor TV channel said that the money was hacked from Bangladesh Bank. Subhankar Saha, an executive director of Bangladesh Bank said when his attention was drawn as to how hackers removed another $870 million after the first theft of $101 million, he said US$ 101 million was transferred from Federal Reserves following a number of mis-instructions. But when the Federal Reserves received the security and anti-money laundering alerts, it immediately stopped transferring money against the remaining mis-instructions. “So, there’s no confusion in this regard.” But who made the mis-instructions. Meanwhile, news report quoting Bangladesh Bank sources said Thursday that primary investigations found no involvement of Bangladesh Bank officials in stealing $101 million from a BB foreign currency account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Investigators, however, are yet to rule out the possibility of involvement of any “internal forces”. “We are still in the middle of the investigations and are looking at both internal and external engagements. So, it is hard to rule out anything,” said Rakesh Asthana, a cyber security expert working for the BB. Asthana, who is leading the BB probe talked to reporters after a meeting with the chief executives and IT heads of all commercial banks at the office of the central bank.Signs so far show that the hacking was done from abroad, Asthana said. On how the payment advice from the BB went to the US bank, Abu Hena Mohammad Razi Hassan, a deputy governor of the BB, said, “It is under investigation.” On the other hand, Muhammad Asaduzzaman, a spokesman for Bangladesh Bank, said there was “sufficient proof” that money from the account had been electronically diverted to banks in the Philippines. So it makes clear that Federal Reserves made the payment but on authentication of Bangladesh Bank and the question is now who made the authentication and how the messages were sent for payment from Dhaka to New York. The onus is on Bangladesh Bank now to identify the culprits. Asaduzzaman said he couldn’t disclose the amount of money stolen or the proportion that had been recovered because that might jeopardize the investigation. He also declined to comment on the nationality of the hackers. The central bank of Bangladesh has around $28 billion in foreign currency reserves. Nearly one-third of the reserves are in the form of liquid assets with different foreign banks including the central banks of the US and the UK. The rest are invested in bonds and gold. A statement posted on Bangladesh Bank’s website Monday night said Bangladesh’s Financial Intelligence Unit was cooperating with anti-money-laundering agencies in the Philippines to trace “funds hacked from a reserve held in the U.S.” Meanwhile news from Manila said the Philippines authorities have identified six persons who were engaged in the hacking and taking payments in their bank accounts in Manila. The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) of Philippines is reportedly investigating six persons for their possible involvement in cross-border electronic fraud and money-laundering.Based on official documents obtained by a Philippines based newspaper the Inquirer, the AMLC identified six persons involved in the scam. Five of them own bank accounts in Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), which were the ones used by what is believed to be an international syndicate to move money-stolen by computer hackers from the US account of Bank of Bangladesh-to the local financial system. The money found its way into local casinos.On March 1, the Court of Appeals (CA) ordered four banks-RCBC, East West Bank, Banco de Oro and Philippine National Bank-to freeze for the next six months the bank accounts and all related accounts of the six individuals. Former bank owner accused the RCBC branch manager for opening fictitious bank accounts for his company. This was the account used to facilitate the deposit of the large amount of remittance and its conversion into pesos. Based on documents, RCBC officials had no reason to doubt the validity of the remittance from Bangladesh. The branch manager also cited several superiors attesting to the validity of the transactions, which-on paper-were backed by underlying infrastructure projects in Bangladesh. A $25-million transaction was supposedly ordered by BB for payment against Kanchur, Meghna and Gumti 2nd Bridges Construction project. The amount was remitted to the account of Vasquez purportedly for the payment of a “loan” from Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica). A payment for $30 million to Lagrosas, an IT professional, likewise under a Jica “loan,” was supposedly ordered on behalf of Dhaka Mass Rapid Trans. Dev. project A $6-million payment order on behalf of an IPFF project cell was supposedly to pay for Cruz’s consultancy fees. Another payment worth $19 million was supposedly from Bheramara Combined Cycle Power Plan Development Project with Vergara as beneficiary, citing “engineering consulting fees.”
