BB heist: Bangladesh close to recovering portion of stolen funds in Philippines

Bangladesh is a step closer to recovering a portion of the $81 millions hackers stole from the central bank’s account in New York and transferred to a bank in the Philippines.

A petition for a civil forfeiture filed by the country’s Anti Money Laundering Council (AMLC) in May was granted a by a trial court, which covers the $15 million handed over by casino junket operator Kim Wong, the local media reports.  

Wong, a Chinese-born Filipino businessman, during his first deposition before the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee blamed two Chinese businessmen for bringing in the stolen $81 million into Philippines. 

He then admitted to receiving 1 billion pesos, more than $20 million, through the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC), but claimed he did not know that it was connected to the heist. He returned $15 million to the authorities in portions. 

Bangladesh has to file a third-party claim in 15 days to get the millions kept in the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, the central bank of the Philippines, said AMLC Executive Director Julia Bacay-Abad. 

Kim Wong at a senate hearing

Ambassador John Gomes was confident that the money would be back in Bangladesh in a month, as he appealed to the new Philippines president, Rodrigo Duterte, to expedite the recovery. 

“If the President is so serious about crime and corruption. I think this is an issue that should be addressed also. This is a crime committed against another country,” he told a recent roundtable discussion in Manila. 

In one of the world’s biggest cyber heists, hackers managed to have $81 million transferred from Bangladesh Bank’s account in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to several accounts in the Philippines’s Rizal Commercial Banking Corp on Feb 4 by sending a message through SWIFT.

They also directed the US Fed Reserve to transfer another $20 million to accounts in Sri Lanka, but the transfer was stopped due to a small but crucial spelling error made by the hackers. 

The AMLC said it already accounted for about $60 million of the stolen funds that includes the $15 million turned over by Wong, the $28 million with Solaire Casino, and the $17 million allegedly with Philrem Services Corp.

It is looking for around $21 million, said Abad in one of the Senate hearings over the heist. 

The civil forfeiture filed by the AMLC was against Kim Wong and his Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co Ltd, William Go’s Centurytex Trading, the RCBC and the Philippine National Bank (PNB).

Ambassador Gomes said he was ‘still puzzled’ how the RCBC quickly processed Bangladesh’s money through withdrawals from Feb 9 to 13 in complete disregard of the stop payment order issued by the Federal Reserve Bank on Feb 8.

The scandal resulted in the resignation of RCBC president, CEO Lorenzo Tan, and bank treasurer Raul Tan. RCBC Jupiter branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito, one of the central figures of the senate’s inquiry, was dismissed along with customer relation manager Angela Torres.

“The president and treasurer resigned. We want to find out what is their accountability because the image of the Philippines has been damaged. The Federal Reserve Bank is upset on how a huge chunk of the money came through RCBC,” said Gomes.