The government-commissioned investigation committee has submitted its interim report on the cyber heist on Bangladesh Bank’s foreign reserves account in the US.
The panel, headed by former central bank governor Mohammed Farashuddin, handed the findings to Finance Minister AMA Muhith around 6pm on Wednesday at his office.
Farashuddin was accompanied by the other committee members: the finance ministry’s Additional Secretary Gokul Chand Das and Prof Mohammad Kaikobad of BUET’s science and engineering department.
Bangladesh Bank Governor Fazle Kabir was also present.
Later, around 7pm, Farashuddin told bdnews24.com by telephone: “We just handed over the report to the finance minister. We were asked to submit the interim report within 30 days, and we have done that.”
The committee was formed on Mar 15, two weeks after a newspaper in the Philippines broke the news of the theft by hackers.
Responding to queries about the summary of their findings, Farashuddin said, “We can’t say anything about that. We’ve submitted the report to the government. The government will let you (journalists) know.”
He had earlier told reporters at the Secretariat, “If the government thinks you need to be briefed, it will do that. If the government tells us to brief you, then we’ll do it.”
While leaving his office around 7:45pm, the finance minister told reporters, “I haven’t read the report yet. Let me read it first, then I’ll talk about it.”
“This is interim report. They will submit the full report after two and a half months. Then we’ll be able to divulge the details,” Muhith added.
In early February, hackers made a number of orders through SWIFT to transfer $101 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Transfer of $20 million to Sri Lanka was halted but $81 million was parked in and beyond the Philippines.
Philippine Daily Inquirer then brought the matter into public domain at the end of February. It was later found that the central bank officials knew about the matter but had kept it under wraps for a month.
Facing harsh criticism and intense pressure for trying to cover up the incident, Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman stepped down.
Apart from the one-month deadline for interim report, the finance ministry last month also said the panel would submit the full report within 75 days.
In its gazette on the constitution of the probe team, it said the committee would check how the payment instructions were sent and to whom, what measures the central bank took to stop the theft, the logic behind concealing the theft and whether central bank officials related to the matter were negligent in their duties.
The committee was also asked to assess the possibility of recovering the stolen funds and check measures to stop a recurrence of such incidents.
A senate committee in the Philippines is currently hearing a case filed there being investigated by the country’s anti-money laundering agency AMLC.
A suspect in the Philippines, Chinese-born casino junket operator Kim Wong has so far returned nearly $10 million of the stolen funds to the AMLC.
But the information provided in the senate hearing has not made it clear whether it will be possible to recover the remaining money.
Source: Bd news24
