A branch of RCBC — Reuters FE Report
Bangladesh has finally sued Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) to recover the funds stolen from its account at the New York Fed.
Officials said the case was filed with a US court for the Southern District of New York early Friday, almost three years after the $101-million heist.
The cyber-criminals had obtained back-door access to the Bangladesh Bank's (BB) network in February 2016.
Confirming the lawsuit, Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) head Abu Hena Razee Hassan said Philrem Service Corporation, casinos and other individuals and institutions, where the money was channelled, were made defendants in the case.
Mr Hassan said the BB appointed US-based law firm 'Cozen O'Connor' to handle the case.
Asked how much time it would take to settle the case, he said, "We'll hold a press briefing shortly where our lawyer will elaborate the matter."
After hacking the BB computer network and SWIFT payments system, the criminals channelled the money to accounts at the RCBC through fraudulent orders.
Investigators found that the hackers tried to rob nearly $1.94 billion by generating 70 fake payment orders to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The New York Fed had forwarded the orders to the BB for authentication.
But following delay in receiving any reply from Dhaka, it responded to five orders and released $101 million.
Some $20 million of the total sum was sent to a Sri Lankan bank account which was later reversed due to detection of a spelling error.
The lion's share of the booty landed in the Philippines and most of it was reported to have been squandered in casinos.
Later, some $15 million more could be recovered from the Philippines.
Following the incident, the Filipino central bank fined the RCBC $21 million after finding its involvement in the reserve heist.
A Filipino trial court on January 10 found Maia Santos Deguito, the then manager of RCBC Jupiter Branch, guilty in the case.
It also fined her $109 million and sentenced her to 32 to 56 years in prison.
Last Wednesday, BB Governor Fazle Kabir spoke of signing a resolution and assistance agreement with the NY Fed to support each other until the recovery of the entire stolen money.
Regarding the delay in filing the case, he said the issue involved many factors that needed to be analysed fully before going for a lawsuit.
"It's a time-consuming matter. We did all the things," Mr Kabir added.
On the administrative probe report by the Mohammad Farashuddin-led committee, he said the report was submitted in May 2016.
But before that, the BB had filed a case here under the anti-money laundering act.
The Criminal Investigation Department was tasked with investigating the matter, but that is yet to be completed, Mr Kabir stated.
According to bdnews24.com, the Philippine bank, sued for a conspiracy to steal Bangladesh Bank reserve, has labelled the lawsuit a "political stunt".
"This is nothing more than a thinly veiled PR campaign disguised as a lawsuit. Based on what we have heard, this suit is completely baseless," Tai-Heng Cheng, Quinn Emanuel's lead attorney to the case, was quoted in a stock exchange filing as saying on Friday.
"We will show that this suit is nothing more than a political stunt by the Bangladesh Bank to try to shift blame from themselves to RCBC."
Quinn Emanuel, a US law firm, was hired to defend the suit, Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) said in the filing.
Bangladesh Bank said funds were stolen with the help of unnamed North Korean hackers who used malware with names such as "Nestegg" and "Macktruck" to obtain backdoor access to its network.
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