Directors of the Bangladesh Bank board have blamed Governor Atiur Rahman for keeping the cyber theft of $100 million from the bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York a secret from all concerned for over a month and said the governor must take the responsibility for this delay.
The members of the board as well as the finance minister learned about the loss of $100 million only more than one month after the incident. Even a few of the top central bank managers learned of the matter only very late.
“We were formally informed at the board meeting on March 9,” said Mustafa Kamal Mujeri, a member of the board and former director general of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.
He said the governor gave an excuse at the meeting, saying the issue was kept secret for the sake of investigation. “But I think even better steps could have been taken if lawmakers had been informed earlier,” Mujeri said.
“It was not a collective decision to keep the issue hidden. So, the governor will have to take full responsibility if anything bad happens,” he said, adding that the governor should have informed the board immediately.
Another board member M Aslam Alam, secretary of Bank and Financial Institutions Division, also expressed dissatisfaction over Bangladesh Bank’s stance of hiding the issue from the board.
He said Bangladesh Bank did not include the issue in the agenda of the board meeting held on February 23. Later, the board held two audit meetings on February 28 and March 1, but the issue was not raised there, either.
“The central bank must inform the board as it is a damage to the country,” he said.
Asked why they had to hide the incident, Abu Hena Mohammad Razee Hassan, deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank, said things will be explained at a press briefing likely to be held in two days.
Bangladesh Bank sources said the governor had tried to tackle the issue alone and informed the issue to the top managers late.
Out of four deputy governors of Bangladesh Bank, three were absent from January 21 to February 7 this year as their job contracts had ended. The heist took place during this period.
They joined office again on February 8 after their contracts had been extended. But the governor brought the issue to their knowledge only on February 13.
The DGs suggested that the governor shared the issue with the authorities concerned, but Atiur did not pay heed.
The governor, who is in New Delhi for attending a three-day conference on “Advancing Asia: Investing for the Future,” is scheduled to arrive in Dhaka today.
No committee has yet been formed to investigate the incident.
Only Rakesh Asthana, former IT specialist of the World Bank and working under Bangladesh Bank’s financial sector support project funded by the World Bank, has been engaged to investigate into the incident. But the authorities concerned have raised questions about the likely standard of such an inquiry.
Asked whether international standards are being maintained in the ongoing inquiry, Secretary Aslam Alam said the ministry will form an investigation team soon after the governor returns home.