BB reserve theft: PH court orders return of $15.25m to B’desh

A Philippine court on Monday ordered Philippine central bank – Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas – to return to the Bangladesh Bank $15.25 million recovered so far out of $81 million stolen from the latter’s reserve account with Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February.
A regional trial court of Philippines passed the order to the Philippine central bank to release $4.63 million and Peso 488.28 million in favour of Bangladesh, Bangladesh Bank general manager and FM Mokammel Huq said at a press conference at the central bank headquarters in Dhaka.
The total amount of released money stood at $15.25 million, he said.
The department of justice in Philippines represented Bangladesh in the case between Philippine government and Kim Wong, a businessman who returned the money from his possession, Mokammel said.
The central bank is now trying to recover the rest of stolen fund and Philippine government and its central bank have been providing all types of cooperation to Bangladesh to recover the fund, he said.
He hoped that Bangladesh would be able to recover the full stolen fund in the shortest possible time under the stolen asset recovery process, he said.
Hackers tried to steal nearly $1 billion from the central bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in early February,
and succeeded in transferring $81 million to four accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp in Manila.
Another central bank general manager, Deb Prasad Debnath, said that the court order proved that Bangladesh had successfully proved that the stolen fund went to Philippines.
Bangladesh would claim that the Philippine government should return the entire stolen fund, he said.
A Reuters report said that regional trial court declared Bangladesh as the rightful owner of the funds, totalling $15 million, Ricardo Paras III, chief state counsel of the Philippines’ department of justice.
During a Philippine Senate hearing in the reserve theft which ended in May, casino junket operator Kim Wong claimed to have received $35 million of the stolen funds but only returned $15 million.
Bangladesh had to file a petition stating its claim to the money before it could be turned over to them.
The court ordered the release of the cash now in the Philippine central bank vault in favour of Bangladesh, Paras told Reuters.
Bangladesh is also seeking to recover $2.7 million frozen by the Philippine casino regulator.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net