BB terms 'Reserve heist’ report fake
Staff Correspondent
Bangladesh Bank (BB) has dismissed a report published by an Indian digital news outlet on a "new reserve heist" at the central bank of Bangladesh.
It was "absolutely fake" news, Bangladesh Bank spokesman Mezbaul Haque told the media yesterday.
"We have a three-tier confirmation policy with the Fed now and have regular reconciliation of transactions," he said.
The BB made the comments after Northeast News, a digital news platform of Northeast India, citing three unidentified officials, yesterday claimed that 'unidentified suspected Indian hackers allegedly took to digital means and ferreted out a few billion dollars from' the BB.
The claim by the Northeast News comes at a time when Bangladesh suffers from dollar shortage with its taka losing significant value against the US dollar for the last two and half years.
In February 2016, the BB lost $101 million with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to hackers.
Of the money, at least $81 million was transferred to the accounts in Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC Bank), from where the money disappeared into the casinos of the Philippines.
So far, Bangladesh retrieved $15 million from RCBC and recovered another $20 million sent to a bank in Sri Lanka. In February 2022, the BB sued Rizal Bank in US court to recover $66m of stolen funds.
