Separately, a Bangladesh court has sent letters rogatory to the United States seeking the findings of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) into the case, said the main police investigator in Dhaka. RCBC was fined a record 1 billion Philippine pesos ($20 million) by the country’s central bank last year for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through it. But it has said in the past that it would not pay any compensation and that Bangladesh Bank bore responsibility for the theft since it was negligent. RCBC did not respond to requests for comment. 5, 2016, and then delayed acting on requests from RCBC’s head office to freeze the funds on Feb. They are the only people to be formally cited in association with the crime.īangladeshi officials have cited internal RCBC documents, also seen by Reuters, to assert that the Filipino bank ignored suspicions raised by some RCBC officials when the money was first remitted to the accounts on Feb.
RCBC has blamed rogue employees, and Philippine prosecutors have filed money-laundering charges against a former RCBC bank manager and four people who owned the bank accounts where the funds were sent, but are not identifiable because the accounts were in fake names.
Teofisto Guingona III shows a document during hearings into how about $81 million of Bangladesh's stolen funds were transmitted online to four private accounts at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. The New York Fed officials agreed to review any proposal Bangladesh Bank wrote up, but they did not formally agree to a joint effort, and have not since worked on it nor heard from Bangladesh Bank, the source said.įILE - Philippine Sen. The New York Fed and SWIFT declined comment.Ī source familiar with the New York Fed’s thinking confirmed that Bangladesh Bank’s external counsel raised the idea of filing a suit against RCBC in the call. Subhankar Saha, a spokesman for Bangladesh Bank, said he had no knowledge of any plans to sue RCBC but that “efforts are on to recover the entire stolen money.” The source said the idea was it would be a civil suit to recover the money, and that Bangladesh hoped the Fed and SWIFT would be joint petitioners.
Bangladesh Bank is likely to send something to the Fed soon.” “The aim is to file a case by March-April in New York,” said one of the sources. It was agreed that Bangladesh Bank would send a proposal on the suit to the New York Fed, they said. Officials from Bangladesh Bank and the New York Fed spoke about legal action against RCBC in a conference call last month that was also attended by two representatives from SWIFT, according to three sources in Dhaka who had direct knowledge of the conversations. Kam Sin Wong, a Chinese junket operator in the Philippines, presents a photo as hearings into how about $81 million of Bangladesh's stolen funds were transmitted online to four private accounts at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.