RCBC president’s lawyer: Deguito should explain ‘fake’ account

The lawyer of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) president on Saturday said branch manager Maia Deguito should explain the alleged fake bank account used in the $81-million money laundering scheme.

Lawyer Francis Lim, counsel for RCBC president and CEO Lorenzo Tan, told Atty. Ferdinand Topacio that he should help Deguito, to answer the accusations of former S&R owner William Go that his signature was forged and that he had no bank account in RCBC's Jupiter branch.

"So instead of asking RCBC to sanction Mr. Tan, Atty Topacio should instead assist his client to explain the accusation of Mr. William Go that she opened an account in her branch without his knowledge, used this account for deposit and withdrawal without his knowledge, and identify who forged Mr. Go's signature to withdraw money," Lim said in a statement.

Lim added that Topacio should also help Deguito justify the attempt of Deguito to leave for Japan on Friday, "which has been perceived as flight and therefore an implied admission of guilt."

He added that Deguito had contradicted her earlier statement that Tan knew about the money-laundering scheme with her statement in a radio interview that she only "assumed" the RCBC president was aware of the multi-million dollar transaction.

Topacio had claimed that Deguito is being used as a scapegoat of the real perpetrators of the money-laundering scheme.

The lawyer said his client would reveal everything that she knows when she attends the Senate hearing on the money laundering case next week.

Deguito allegedly confided with Go that she opened "fictitious" accounts – dollar and peso – at the RCBC branch on Jupiter Street on Feb. 23, 2016.

The accounts were made under Go's brokerage firm Centurytex Trading.

She then allegedly offered the Filipino Chinese businessman P10 million to go along with the scheme, which prompted the him to have his lawyer, Ramon S. Esguerra, consult with RCBC.

Because of the accounts under his company's name, Go  was earlier implicated in the money laundering scheme.

Esguerra said Friday that his client never consented to open nor had knowledge of these accounts, which were allegedly used as storing ground by hackers for the $81 million, which was taken from the Bangladesh Central Bank in the US through hacking.

Cyber security experts suspect that a malware was used in the bank heist.

Experts are now trying to determine how the hackers were able to install the malware in the Bangladesh Central Bank's computer systems.  —ALG, GMA News