Retreating from his previous position, Finance Minister AMA Muhith said on Wednesday that publishing of the Bangladesh Bank’s cyber heist probe report would take time.
“We (government) will not publish the report right now. More time is needed to publish it,” Muhith said this while talking to journalists at the Secretariat.He said: Recovery of the stolen fund will be delayed if the report is made public,” adding that Law Minister Anisul Huq had called him from Texas on Tuesday and asked him not to publish the report.
“We are optimistic about recovering most of the stolen fund as the President of the Philippines assured us. I hope that most of the $81 million stolen money will be recovered from Philippine within five months,” he said.
Earlier, Muhith said that the investigation report would be published on the central bank and Financial Institution Division websites on Thursday.
A three-member government-formed committee led by former Bangladesh Bank governor Mohammed Farashuddin submitted the report to the finance ministry on April 30 in 2016.
A Philippine court on Monday ordered its central bank to return to Bangladesh a portion of recovered fund stolen from Bangladesh central bank’s reserve account maintained with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The court also declared Bangladesh as the rightful owner of the funds, totalling $15.25 million.
Muhith on Tuesday said $15.25 million would be returned to us by the Philippines in a day or two and would be deposited in the central bank’s reserve account.
Unknown hackers tried to steal nearly $1 billion from the Bangladesh Bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in early February. They succeeded in transferring $81m to four accounts maintained with Rizal Commercial Banking Corp in Manila.
