Bangladesh Bank found out about $101m theft a day after money was transferred from US account

Bangladesh Bank officials found that $101 million was lost from its account held by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York a day after the cyber theft in February.

According to the case filed over the heist, after finding out about the fund transfers, Bangladesh sent an email to the Fed on Feb 6 asking it to stop the transactions.

But funds of $101 million were already wire-transferred to bank accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

Of the transferred money, $20 million to Sri Lanka could be stopped, but the remaining $81 million found its way to and beyond the Philippines.

The Philippine Daily Inquirer, which broke the news, said the money was transferred to local bank accounts on Feb 4 using the Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) messaging system commonly used by banks for international transactions.

Bangladesh Bank filed a case over the theft on Tuesday after the resignation of governor Atiur Rahman in the face of intense pressure.

Jubair Bin Huda, the central bank’s Accounts and Budgeting Department Joint Director, started the case with Motijheel police on Tuesday afternoon.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Anwar Hossain told bdnews24.com that the case was lodged under the Money Laundering Prevention Act and the ICT Act, accusing several unnamed persons.

In the case, Huda said he left office with his colleagues before 8:03pm on Feb 4, which was a Thursday.

Notifications confirming the transactions of that day were supposed to be printed automatically at the central bank’s SWIFT Room on the following day, which was Friday, the weekly holiday.Huda said he went to the office at 8:45am on Feb 5.

Assistant Director Rafiq Ahmed first noticed that the notifications were not being printed even after he logged on to the SWIFT server at 10:30am, Huda said in the case.

The officials thought the problem was with the printer and left office at 12:30pm with a plan to fix it the next day, according to Huda.

On Feb 6, Saturday, they entered office at 9am but failed to launch the SWIFT software, he said. The software was started in an alternative way at around 13:30pm but the printing problem persisted.

They then informed the department’s head BH Khan and his deputy Md Zaker Hossain about the matter.

“On their verbal permission, we were finally able to get the notifications printed manually using an alternative system,” Huda said.

Officials found three of the messages ‘unusual’ where the Fed had asked some questions, he said.

The first message from the New York bank came at 10:24am on Feb 5. It could be printed at 12:30pm the next day.

“It wanted to know about 12 transactions in that message. Our system received the two other messages at 12:08pm on Feb 6. One of them was about four transactions and the other was about 30 transactions. We were asked for more clarification on four payments,” Huda said in the case.

The Bangladesh Bank has been claiming hackers sent fake messages to execute the fund transfers.

In the case, Huda, too, said there was no ACK (positive acknowledgement) copy of the messages ordering the transfers in the bank’s server.

“Then we feared a disaster in our SWIFT system and asked the SWIFT authorities to review the matter,” he said.

After sending an email to the Fed on Feb 6 asking it to stop all sorts of transactions until further notice, the central bank phoned the US bank on Feb 7 only to find that it was a holiday, Huda said.