What went before: Conviction over $81-M Bangladesh bank heist

The 2016 $81-million Bangladesh bank heist caught not only the attention of Filipinos, but also the international community.

Earlier on Thursday,  Maia Deguito, former branch manager of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), was found guilty of money laundering in relation to the 2016 cyber heist of $81 million from Bangladesh central bank.

Deguito was slapped with charges in 2017 after she was implicated in the laundering of the huge amount of money from Bangladesh's bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, using fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system.

The "hot" $81 million was later transferred to multiple accounts under four fictitious names.

From the multiple accounts, the money was allegedly consolidated into a single US dollar account in the name of Filipino-Chinese businessman William Go.

Later, the stolen funds were laundered to untraceable gambling chips in some casinos in Manila.

A Philippine Senate hearing was done to probe the money laundering scheme. Reports had indicated that only $18 million of the stolen money was recovered.

Bangladesh's central bank threatened to file a lawsuit against RCBC. It even urged New York Fed to join in filing the lawsuit against the local bank.

The RCBC, for its part, had said the cyber heist was an inside job and pointed out that Bangladesh bank was just "covering up its negligence."

Meanwhile, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) fined RCBC a record P1 billion ($20 million) in 2016 for the bank's failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through its system.

Sentence

Deguito was sentenced to four to seven years imprisonment for each of the eight counts of violation of the Anti-Money Laundering Act and was ordered to pay more than $109 million in fine.

She refused to comment on the decision of the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 149, but her legal counsel said the camp plans to file a motion for reconsideration.

Her co-accused, account holders Michael Francisco Cruz, Jessie Christopher Lagrosas, Alfred Santos Vergara, and Enrico Teodoro Vasquez, were later found to be fictitious. —LBG, GMA News