RCBC threatens to sue Bangladesh Bank

Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) is also considering taking legal action against officials of the Bangladesh central bank for supposedly maligning the local lender in relation to the $81-million cyber heist in 2016.

“RCBC has had it and will consider a lawsuit against Bangladesh Central Bank (BB) officials for claiming the bank had a hand in the $81M cyber heist two years ago,” RCBC said in a statement.

“We will not allow them to continue to malign RCBC,” the bank said.

RCBC issued the statement on the heels of a Reuters report saying that Bangladesh Bank will file a lawsuit against the Philippine lender for its role in one of the world’s biggest cyber heists.

“Bangladesh Bank will file a lawsuit in a New York court within two to three months in connection with the reserve theft,” central bank deputy governor Abu Hena Mohd. Razee Hassan told Reuters.

“We are in talks with the Federal Reserve Bank and SWIFT to join us as they are also victims,” he said.

But RCBC claimed Bangladesh Bank is perpetuating a “cover-up” and “using the Philippine lender as a “scapegoat to keep their people in the dark.”

“Various reports, including their own, indicate an inside job. BB and Dhaka officials refuse to release their findings to hide from the Bangladeshi public what could very well be the involvement of its own officials who may have helped loot their money deposited with the New York Federal Reserve,” the Yuchenco-led lender said.

RCBC emphasized that it is “ready and prepared” should Bangladehs bank pursue its lawsuit.

“The first thing we will ask is for BB and Dhaka to submit to court their findings. If they refuse, they will immediately suffer from comparison since RCBC willingly shared information to the extent allowed by law. And why sue RCBC when they should be suing instead their own, the criminal elements from within?” the bank said.

Bangladesh Ambassador to the Philippines Asad Alam Siam said Dhaka is willing to share in public the findings of its own investigation if the Philippines and other countries involved in the cyber heist would make their reports public.

“Regarding the findings of internal investigation, you may please note that the internal investigation report of RCBC, or that of NBI (National Bureau of Investigation), or for that matter, the findings of BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas), are yet to be made public,” Siam told GMA News Online.

“Most of the cyber security firms found it was a third party hacking. A criminal investigation in Philippines might reveal the connections between the hackers and the beneficiaries, since the beneficiaries are from here,” the envoy said.

Many information in the Philippines are not shared  under “the pretext of bank secrecy,” he said. “Blaming involvement of others does not exonerate RCBC’s responsibility.”

In February 2016, unidentified perpetrators stole $81 million from the Bangladesh Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system.

The money was then coursed to fictitious accounts at the RCBC branch on Jupiter Street in Makati City and then transferred to casinos, high rollers, and a junket operator.

After two years, there is no word on who was responsible and Bangladesh Bank has been able to retrieve only about $15 million, mostly from a Manila junket operator, according to Reuters.

The BSP fined RCBC a record P1 billion in 2016 for failing to prevent the movement of stolen money through its system.

RCBC maintained that it will not compensate Bangladesh Bank.

“Again, why is BB not going against those who have been identified as having possession of the remaining money? There is none left in RCBC,” the bank said. —VDS, GMA News