The Bangladesh Bank (BB) will sue Philippines’ Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) and several other individuals and companies over the $81 million heist from its reserve with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (NY Fed)
“All preparations for the case are completed and a delegation is now in New York. The lawsuit will be filed with Southern Court in New York on Wednesday,” said Governor Fazle Kabir said.
Speaking to media at the central bank offices on Wednesday (Jan 30), Kabir said, “The purpose of the lawsuit is to recover the funds stolen from Bangladesh Bank reserve in 2016 and bring the perpetrators to justice.”
RCBC, money transfer company Philrem Service Corporation, several officials of the both companies, owner of a Philippines-based casino and several other companies and individuals will be named in the lawsuit, he said.
Karbir informed that Bangladesh Bank would sign an agreement with the NY Fed to get all-out assistant on the case.
RCBC said that it had engaged a top New York law firm to handle its defence, Reuters reported citing a statement by the Filipino bank.
“We welcome this complaint, as it is an opportunity for RCBC to put on record again that it was a victim of what was started in Bangladesh by still unnamed persons,” the bank said.
Hackers stole a total $101 million from Bangladesh’s account at the NY York Fed in February 2016.
Of the amount, $81 million was transferred to four accounts at the RCBC in Manila and another $20 million to a bank in Sri Lanka.
But the transfer of $20 million to Sri Lanka had failed because of a spelling error by the hackers.
The RCBC was fined a record 1 billion pesos ($19.17 million) by the Philippine central bank in August 2016 for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through the bank.
A former treasurer of RCBC and five other workers at the branch where the cash was withdrawn face money laundering charges.
On Jan 11 this year, a Philippine court held a former manager of a RCBC branch guilty on eight counts of money laundering, the first conviction in the cyber heist.
Bangladesh, however, managed to retrieve just $15 million of the stolen money from a Manila junket operator, a role that involves marketing casinos to VIPs.
