The central bank of Bangladesh is expecting to recover the entire amount of US$ 81 million stolen from its account, as the Philippines' central bank is probing the involvement of Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in the transactions process.
Bangladesh will get back the entire amount of stolen fund from the Philippines, if investigation by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the central bank of the Philippines, and the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) find the RCBC involved in such transactions, Bangladesh Bank (BB) Governor Fazle Kabir said.
"The BSP investigation is now at the final stage," Mr. Kabir said while announcing the Monetary Policy Statement (MPS) for the July-December of the current calendar year at the central bank headquarters in Dhaka Tuesday.
"We've already sought mutual legal assistance (MLA) from the attorney general's office to recover the stolen US$ 81 million money from the Philippines," the BB governor noted.
The central bank of Bangladesh is set to receive $15.25 million from the AMLC of the Philippines after completing a legal process.
"The BSP and AMLC are now helping to recover the stolen money while Ambassador of Bangladesh to the Philippines Major-General (Retd.) John Gomes is coordinating the recovery process," the BB governor explained.
He also said the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee would resume hearing in this connection after the hearing held earlier.
Talking to the FE, a BB senior official said a high-powered team would go to the Philippines again to expedite the ongoing recovery process of the stolen money.
"We're now working to send a three-member team to the Philippines within the first week of August in this connection," the central banker noted.
As part of the moves, the central bank is also working to arrange a meeting with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York within the next month to speed up efforts for recovering the stolen money from the Philippines.
"We're hopeful about holding the meeting with Federal Reserve Bank of New York further at any suitable time in August," the central banker said.
Earlier on May 10 last, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the central bank of Bangladesh and SWIFT agreed at a meeting held in Basel of Switzerland to work jointly for recovering the entire amount of US$ 81 million from the Philippines.
The three parties also vowed to catch the thieves and protect the global financial system from these types of attacks.
Cyber criminals sent 35 orders using the SWIFT financial messaging system to transfer around $951 million out of the BB's account at the New York Federal Reserve Bank on February 4 night to a series of private accounts in other countries.
The New York Federal Reserve Bank executed five of these orders, transferring a total of $101 million to four private accounts in the Philippines and one to the account of a non-governmental organisation in Sri Lanka.
Nearly $20 million of the $101 million siphoned off was recovered from Sri Lanka. The lion's share of the money, $81 million, landed in the Philippines.
However, the BB has started preparing a remediation plan to ensure a foolproof IT security system in the country's central bank to avert any sort of cybercrimes in future.
"We're now preparing the remediation plan to make our IT security at par with the global standard," the BB governor said.
He also said the BB is following three tiers of authentication systems - e-mail, SWIFT message and phone - while making any overseas payment through Federal Reserve Bank of New York to avert any unwanted incident.
Two inspection reports on the cyber heist have already been submitted to the government for consideration, according to the BB governor.
siddique.islam@gmail.com
BB eyes recovery of entire heist money
Siddique Islam | Published: July 27, 2016 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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