Bangladesh is set to get back USD 15.25 million (Tk 120 crore) out of the USD 81 million stolen from Bangladesh Bank (BB) reserves by hackers earlier this year. The money will come back to the country as a Philippines court has issued an order to BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) to release $4.63 million and Peso 488.28 million in favor of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Bank general manager and assistant spokesperson FM Mokammel Huq told reporters at a press conference at the BB headquarters in the capital yesterday.
The total amount of released money stood at around $15.25 million, he said.
The Philippine regional trial court gave the order after a number of hearings, he said. Philippine’s Department of Justice represented Bangladesh at the case between Philippine government and Kim Wong, Mokammel said. ‘The central bank is now trying to recover the rest of stolen fund. Philippines government and its central bank have been providing all types of cooperation to Bangladesh to recover the fund’, he said.
He hoped that Bangladesh would be able to recover the full stolen fund in the shortest possible time under the stolen recovery asset’s process, he said.
Four months ago, Philippines Casino junket operator Kim Wong had returned Tk. 120 crore. As per the Philippine law, that amount was seized by the state. The Philippines court yesterday ordered its return to Bangladesh.
Bangladesh’s ambassador to the Philippines, John Gomez, told The Independent that the process to get back the next Tk. 19.5 crore, which is lying with the Casino in Manila, would now start after the court order.
The ambassador said the order has removed most hurdles to recovering the entire amount of the stolen money. He also said that a team led by law minister Anisul Huq is likely to visit the Philippines next month to recover the rest of the money.
Meanwhile, the Philippines court has declared Bangladesh as the rightful owner of the funds, totalling USD 15 million, said Ricardo Paras III, chief state counsel of the Philippine department of justice. On February 4, USD 101 million was stolen by hackers from the Bangladesh Bank’s reserves with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York through Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in the Philippines and Pan Asia Banking Corporation in Sri Lanka.
During a Philippine senate hearing into the heist ending in May, a casino junket operator claimed to have received USD 35 million of the stolen funds, but only returned USD 15 million. It is not clear what happened to the rest of the money.
Bangladesh had to file a petition, stating its claim to the money before it could be turned over to it.
Meanwhile, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Bangladesh police has detected negligence on the part of at least 13 officials of four departments of the BB in the USD 81 million heist, said CID’s additional inspector general Shah Alam.
He told The Independent that steps would be taken against those officials. “We’ve also identified 25 citizens of the Philippines, Sri Lanka and China, who were involved in this major bank heist,” the senior officer added.
Among the 13 BB officials, four are from the accounts and budget department, three from the information technology operations and communications, two from the forex reserves and treasury management department, and four from the payment systems department.
The CID also identified five foreign organisations behind the bank heist—Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), Philrem Service Corporation, Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company Limited, Ramberry Hotel and Salika Foundation. The investigators claimed they have uncovered some previously unknown vital information during the investigation.
The CID is investigating the bank heist in coordination with the law enforcement agencies of 12 countries as well as with Interpol and embassies.