DHAKA-Bangladesh’s central bank chief has resigned after hackers stole $81 million from the nation’s foreign reserves in one of the biggest bank heists in history, the finance minister announced on Tuesday.
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Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman told reporters he was ready to quit after spending seven years in the top bank post.
Bloomberg Business reports that the minister holds the Federal Reserve responsible for the stolen funds saying, “We kept money with the Federal Reserve Bank and irregularities must be with the people who handle the funds there”, he said.
The group of hackers managed to steal at least million from Bangladesh’s New York-based Federal Reserve account.
Bangladesh Bank tried to contact NY on February 6 by email, fax and phone to ask that the transactions be suspended when it realised that the SWIFT interbank messaging system which it normally used was not working properly, Huda said.
The hackers had opened four bank accounts with Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) in Philippines back in May of 2015.
To date, there is no evidence of any attempt to penetrate Federal Reserve systems in connection with the payments in question, and there is no evidence that any Fed systems were compromised.
The US$20 million transfer to Pan Asia Banking raised alarms because of its size and a typo in the beneficiary’s name, according to Nalaka Wijayawardana, deputy general manager of marketing at the bank. The money was later transferred to an account belonging to ethnic Chinese businessman William So Go, a Philippine senate committee heard this week.
The unknown hackers who breached the computer systems of the bank successfully transferred up to $100 million to casinos in the Philippines.
Another $20m was transferred to a Sri Lankan bank, but it was stopped after a routing bank identified a spelling mistake and alerted Bangladesh Bank.
On Tuesday, the finance minister said he had asked Atiur Rahman to resign following revelations that the governor of Bangladesh Bank-the country’s central bank-had failed to inform authorities of the theft for a month.
Mr Rahman said the country’s central bank had now hired worldwide experts in security to prevent any repeat of the incident in future.
A printer error first tipped off Bangladesh’s central bank, according to a complaint filed to police that provided new details on the attempted theft of almost $1 billion. Philrem Service Corp declined to comment on the matter. (RCBC) said last week it was investigating an $81-million deposit at one of its branches.
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Bautista said a further $21 million went to an account of Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co, a gaming firm in northern Philippines.
