Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith yesterday said the hacking of Bangladesh Bank account to steal money is an unusual situation, reports BSS.“I can’t make any statement on it ... I have come to know about it from a
newspaper. This is a very unusual situation,” he told reporters after a meeting with World Bank (WB) Vice-President for South Asia Region Annette Dixon in the capital.
In a statement, Bangladesh Bank said it is preparing to take legal steps to recover the money, stolen from its reserve account in the United States.
“A part of the stolen money has already been recovered, and the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) is active with
the anti-money launde-
ring authorities of the Philippines to recover and get back rest of the money,” it said.
The anti-money laundering authorities of the Philippines has also filed a case against the incident and started collecting
information about all the frozen bank accounts related to the hacking
incident, the BB state-
ment said.
According to Bangladesh Bank, the legal steps would be taken once the Philippines anti- money laundering authorities concludes their investigation into the incident.
If necessary, it said,
it would engage the
Stolen Assets Recovery (StAR) of the World
Bank (WB).
BB also said that an expert and a forensic investigation team of the WB have been working with the BFIU team on the incident. BB also reiterated its sug-gestions of strengthening of cyber security in the banks and financial institutions against the backdrop of increasing cyber security threats. The central bank on Friday in a directive recommended the banks and financial institution establish cyber security governance with visibility at the board level.
The other recommendations include comprehensive cyber security risk assessment, conducting technical gap assessment and establishing a
vulnerability management program, arranging cyber security awareness programs and training for all employees, setting up 24x7 information security operations center for
monitoring and incident management, developing an incident response plan and managing vendor risks for outsourced services.