BB, Fed, Swift to gear up efforts to recover $81m theft fund

Bangladesh Bank on Wednesday said that New York Federal Reserve Bank, BB and SWIFT would work together to gear up efforts for recovering the US$ 81 million fund stolen from the BB’s Fed Reserve account that was laundered into the Philippines.
The BB issued a press statement saying that senior representatives of the New York Federal Reserve, BB and SWIFT met in New York on Tuesday to continue discussions on the cyber fraud committed in early February.
The three parties discussed certain technical details of the February event to enhance their mutual understanding of how the fraud occurred, and further discussed steps that have been and will be taken to remediate the event, according to the statement.
The participants remain concerned about this event and recommitted to working together to recover the entire proceeds of the fraud as expeditiously as possible, bring the perpetrators to justice in cooperation with law enforcement agencies from other jurisdictions, and lend support to multilateral international efforts to further protect the global financial system from these types of attacks in the future, it said.
A four-member BB team, headed by deputy governor Abu Hena Mohd Razee Ha ssan, left Dhaka on August 14 for New York to attend the meeting.
The tripartite meeting was held in New York on August 16-17.
A BB official told New Age on Wednesday that the central bank’s team had given top priority to boosting a coordinated effort among the parties for recovering the stolen money from the Philippines.
The BB delegation discussed implementation of a remediation plan to ensure foolproof IT-security systems in the country’s central bank to avert any kind of cybercrime in the coming days.
He said the meeting had reviewed the latest position on implementation of the joint statement issued by the three parties after their first meeting held in Basel in Switzerland on May 10, this year.
The cyber fraud took place on the night of February 4, sending a total of 35 transfer orders into the US Federal Reserve Bank in New York where the central bank of Bangladesh maintains its foreign exchange account.
US$ 20 million of the total amount of US$ 101 million siphoned off was recovered from Sri Lanka. The lion’s share of the money had landed in the Philippines.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net