DHAKA — Bangladesh’s central bank was to send a team of officials to the Philippines on Tuesday to push for the recovery of more of the $81 million stolen from its account at the New York Federal Reserve last year and routed through a bank in Manila.

AMLC
File photo shows a suitcase full of bundles of $100 bills turned over by Atty. Inocencio Ferrer, Jr.(second from right), legal counsel of junket operator Kim Wong, on March 31, 2016 to officials of Bangladesh central bank. The money was part of the $81 million stolen from the Bangladesh central bank that found its way to Philippine banks and casinos. Also pictured (L-R) are Second Secretary and Head of Chancery of the Bangladesh Embassy Manila Probash Lamarong, Anti-Money Laundering Council Secretariat Executive Director Julia Bacay-Abad, AMLC Member and Insurance Commissioner Emmanuel Dooc, and BSP Deputy Governor Vicente Aquino. — Photo by Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas

Bangladesh Bank has been able to retrieve only about $15 million of the money stolen in one of the world’s biggest cyber heists.

A Bangladesh Bank lawyer, Ajmalul Hossain, told Reuters on Monday the bank was working on “various ways” to get back the rest of the money from institutions in the Philippines.

Mr. Hossain said two officials from Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit, controlled by the central bank, would meet representatives of the Philippine Department of Justice, Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) and a presidential commission, among others.

“All the money that was lost has been frozen… we’re trying to expedite the process of recovery,” Mr. Hossain told Reuters by telephone from London.

He declined to give details of the strategy to recover the money from the heist, which according to the US Federal Bureau of Investigation was state-sponsored.

On the evening of Feb. 4 last year, yet-to-be-identified hackers initiated fake transfer orders which sought to move nearly $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank’s New York Fed account mostly to accounts at Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC).

Many of the transfer orders initiated by the hackers were blocked or reversed by intermediary banks, but $81 million made it to accounts in fake names at RCBC. Most of the funds then disappeared into Manila’s loosely regulated casino industry.

The Philippines’ AMLC has accused several RCBC officials of money-laundering in a complaint filed at its Justice department, though the bank has blamed only a couple of rogue officials.

RCBC was fined a record P1 billion by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas for its failure to prevent the movement of the loot through its bank, while a top Bangladeshi investigator has said he suspected some IT technicians from the Dhaka-based bank helped the hackers carry out the heist.

The $15 million that Bangladesh has so far recovered is part of $35 million that casino boss Kim Wong had told a Philippines Senate inquiry he received from two Chinese gamblers without knowing it was stolen. — Reuters

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