Finance Minister AMA Muhith has said that the full investigation report on the cyber heist of US$101 million from the Bangladesh Bank’s account with New York’s Federal Reserve Bank will be made public once he receives it from the probe committee. “Once we get the full report, it will be made public,” the minister said while talking to reporters after inaugurating the Bangladesh wing of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), a London-based multinational professional services network, in the capital’s Gulshan yesterday.
The government is supposed to examine the report after receiving a preliminary report on the scandal. Muhith, however, said he is yet to go through the report. On Wednesday, the three-member Probe Committee led by former BB Governor Dr Farashuddin, which was formed to investigate the Bangladesh Bank’s reserve heist scandal, submitted its preliminary report to Finance Minister, AMA Muhith. On March 15, the government had formed the three-member Committee, which was scheduled to submit a preliminary report within 30 days and a full report within 75 days. The Committee investigated how illegal payment instructions were issued from BB and to whom. It examined whether the steps taken by the Central Bank to prevent the payments were appropriate. It also evaluated the reasons behind the alleged suppression of information about the heist by higher authorities. On February 4, cyber hackers stole USD 101 million from BB’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Of the stolen money, USD 81 million was wire-transferred to bank accounts in the Philippines and USD 20 million to Sri Lanka.