Sayeed Muhammad: In a major cyber heist, hackers stole the Bangladesh Bank money kept at the New York Fed in February 2016 using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system. Afterwards, they sent it to Rizal Commercial Banking Corp and from there, it disappeared into the casino industry in the Philippines, reports Reuters. However, an international probe into the matter failed to file charges against anybody despite finger-pointing among Bangladesh, Philippines, the Fed and SWIFT for the last two years.“There is an option before us to settle the issue out of court,” a senior BB official said preferring anonymity. His made the remark as a precedent an out-of-court settlement in February reached by Ecuador’s Banco del Austro and Wells Fargo over a 2015 cyber heist. Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith on Thursday met Carlos Dominguez, Filipino finance secretary, on the sidelines of a four-day annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank in Manila. The sitting was meant for discussing discuss the cyber heist, confirmed two senior central bank officials close to the issue. Bangladesh has not taken legal action as yet, but had planned a suit to recover $66 million. Around $15 million has been recovered from a Manila junket operator, a job that involves marketing casinos to VIPs.“We will try for all possible options to recover our stolen money,” one of the Bangladesh central bank official stated, while there was no immediate comment from Dominguez or Rizal bank in Manila.
Our time is a news portal