The US$81 million Bangladesh Bank fund heist has raised more questions than answers till date about complicity of various Filipino actors in handling dirty money.
The scam has dealt a blow to the Philippines’ banking sector and financial regulatory system, where players are coming up with conflicting reports and allegations against each other as the Senate and regulators have started investigation.
There was no “criminal collusion” among executives and officials of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) that paved the way for the $81-million cyber robbery at Bangladesh’s foreign reserves, the head of the bank’s legal and regulatory group claimed.
At most, lawyer Macel Fernandez-Estavillo said, the liability could be confined to Maia Santos-Deguito, RCBC branch manager, and Angela Torres, senior customer relationship officer of RCBC-Jupiter branch in Makati City.
“We saw in our investigation that Maia is not negligent, she knows who she was talking to. …And Angela Torres, too, I think the two of them know about this,” she said.
“From our investigation, we can’t find anything that would support that there was internal criminal collusion,” the lawyer added.
However, Deguito pointed her finger at the RCBC president Torenzo Tan, who denied any such allegation. Accusations and counter-accusations between Deguito and RCBC management have confused investigators who had question marks about the bank’s internal probe.
Senate blue ribbon committee chair Teofisto Guingona III, too, said, “Deguito is not the most guilty (based on) what she testified in the executive session, but there are bigger persons behind this whole thing, and names are coming out already.”
Estavillo assured cooperation from the bank in the investigation being conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), whose help was sought by the anti-money laundering council.
“We want to get to the bottom of this. To the extent that our system can help them, we will help,” she said.
The FBI is helping in the probe of the $81 million stolen from the Bangladesh central bank’s accounts in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York last month, which was immediately sent via electronic transfer to RCBC in the Philippines.
The Philippine Senate has also conducted two hearings on the heist, with another scheduled on 29 March.
In a separate interview on radio, lawyer Ferdinand Topacio, legal counsel of Deguito, said his client is prepared to bare the truth in all investigation.
“It’s unfortunate that the bank officials are pinning her down for the defective system they have in the bank,” Topacio said.
“Just prove your case in court, prove it beyond reasonable doubt. The time of talking is over,” he told the RCBC officials.
Source: Prothom Alo
This article is a clear indication that in a corruption infested society such as Philippines (and also Bangladesh), the idea of an ‘internal probe’ is a joke!