A tripartite meeting among the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Bangladesh Bank and SWIFT will be held in New York on August 16-17 to gear up efforts for recovering the US$81 million from the BB Fed account into the Philippines, officials said.
A four-member BB team, headed by Deputy Governor Abu Hena Mohd Razee Hassan, left Dhaka on Sunday night for New York to attend the meeting in the US financial capital.
"Our team will give top priority to boosting up a coordinated effort among the parties for recovering the stolen money from the Philippines," a BB senior official told the FE.
The delegation is expected to discuss at the meeting implementation of a remediation plan to ensure foolproof IT-security systems in the country's central bank to avert any sort of cybercrime in future.
"The remediation plan has almost been finalised to give BB's IT security international standards," the central banker explained.
In the meantime, the BB is working to establish a risk-free overseas transaction system with help from the SWIFT (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications), according to the BB official.
He also said the meeting will review the latest position on implementation of the joint statement issued by the three parties after their first meeting held in Basel of Switzerland on May 10 last.
"The parties also agreed to pursue jointly certain common goals: to recover the entire proceeds of the fraud and bring the perpetrators to justice, and protect the global financial system from these types of attacks," the New York Fed said in the statement.
The three parties had also vowed to catch the thieves and protect the global financial system from such attacks.
"Recovery of stolen money will be our top agenda at the meeting," the BB deputy governor told the FE before flying for New York.
He said the meeting will review the latest developments over implementation of the joint statement.
Talking to the FE, another BB official said the Federal Reserve Bank of New York earlier had sent a letter to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), the central bank of the Philippines, requesting effective measures for recovering the stolen funds as part of the statement.
"Law-enforcing agencies are still working to bring the persons involved in the cyber heist to book," the BB official noted.
The central banker believes Bangladesh will be able to recover the stolen money from the Philippines easily if the Fed plays its due role.
The cyber fraud took place on the night of February 4, sending a total of 35 transfer orders into the US Federal Reserve Bank in New York where the central bank of Bangladesh maintains its foreign-exchange account.
Nearly $20 million of the total amount of $101 million siphoned off was recovered from Sri Lanka. The lion's share of the money landed in the Philippines.
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