The government has asked the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of Bangladesh Bank to investigate into the incident of money looting occurred in the Sonali Bank, UK in September last year.
It also instructed the unit to take necessary steps for recovering US$0.25m of the London-based Bangladeshi bank.
The instructions were given at a recent inter-ministerial meeting at the finance ministry, with Bank and Financial Institutions Division Secretary Dr MA Aslam Alam in the chair.
During the meeting, banking division also gave six directives to the management of state-owned Sonali Bank, which include taking more steps for stopping these kinds of incidents and more protection measures for the information technology department of Sonali Bank for improving computer networking system.
According to the meeting, officials and staffs won't go outside of their respective offices, without log off the swift system and departmental punishment will be given to the alleged officials of state-owned Sonali Bank, who were responsible for the hacking incident.
In a rare incident in September last year, Turkish hackers looted the money.
In February 2014, MA Aslam Alam disclosed the information while addressing the annual conference of the scam hit state-owned bank. Banking secretary revealed it in presence of finance minister AMA Muhith and other top officials.
“Some hackers of Turkey had transferred the amount to their own account in the middle of the last year. Experts of Bangladesh University of the Engineering Technology have identified the location from where the hackers conducted their mission,'' Aslam Alam told the conference.
The government has already informed the Turkish government of the incident, and both the two governments have agreed to work jointly to recover the money.
Alam had blamed the bank’s weak internal control system and opined that the risk management system of the bank should be strengthened further.
The inter-ministerial meeting observed that looting huge amount of money from the Sonali Bank in London probed inefficiency of the bank's Information Technology department and bank management, which had utterly failed to take precautionary measures to protect its clients' money even after several vault burglaries took place in the largest state-owned banks.
Sonali Bank head of office will deposit $0.25m against the account of Sonali Bank in the UK. Two staff of the bank swift official Md Shah Alam, junior official Monowar Hossain were suspended and sent to jail following the incident.
The bank’s chief operating officer has also been suspended.
