A portion of the money which was allegedly hacked from reserve account of Bangladesh Bank (BB) in the United States has already been brought back.
“BB Financial Intelligence Unit is in active touch with the Philippines Anti Money Laundering Authority to recover the rest of the hacked money,” said a BB statement issued on Monday after a month of the incident.
However, the central bank did not disclose the amount of hacked money.
The statement also stated that a legal step will be taken to bring back the money immediately after completing investigation currently carried out by the Philippines Anti Money Laundering Authority.
If necessary, it said, it would engage the Stolen Assets Recovery (StAR) of the World Bank to recover the money.
For the interest of fair probe, the investigative matter collected from and outside of the country about the incident has been kept undisclosed, it said.
“The cyber attack is very new for Bangladesh, though such incident is very familiar in the banking system of the developed world,” said the central bank.
Inquirer.net of Philippines reported that hackers have transferred $100m from the Bangladesh Bank’s foreign exchange reserve to Philippines.
“The initial report is that some funds went missing in Bangladesh and the suspicion is that this bank—or the central bank of that country, itself—was hit by hackers based in China,” said one banking source, relating a story that was corroborated by at least three ranking government officials and four other bankers.
“Somehow, those funds found their way into the Philippine financial system.”
Bangladesh Bank fund heist timeline