Reserve Theft Report Delayed for 97th Time

The submission of the investigation report in the case concerning the theft of Bangladesh’s central bank reserves has been postponed for the 97th time, further prolonging one of the country’s most closely watched financial crime investigations.

The report was scheduled to be submitted on Sunday, 9 August, before the court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Sefatullah in Dhaka. However, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is responsible for investigating the case, failed to submit the report. The court subsequently fixed 14 September as the next date for submission.

The information was confirmed by Rukonuzzaman, a sub-inspector of the prosecution department.

The case relates to the unprecedented cyber theft in February 2016, when hackers used fraudulent SWIFT payment instructions to steal $81 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The stolen funds were transferred to accounts in the Philippines, raising concerns about the involvement of an organised network operating across several countries.

The incident came to light after several fraudulent transfer requests were processed through the international banking system. Although the perpetrators initially attempted to steal a much larger amount, most of the transactions were blocked or stopped. The $81 million that was successfully transferred, however, was quickly moved through the Philippine financial system.

On 15 March 2016, Bangladesh Bank joint director of the Accounts and Budgeting Department, Zubayer bin Huda, filed a case with Motijheel Police Station in Dhaka under the Money Laundering Prevention Act. No individual was directly named as an accused in the case at the time.

The CID later took responsibility for the investigation. Yet, despite repeated extensions and the passage of years, investigators have been unable to submit the final report to the court. The latest postponement means the investigation has now continued for more than a decade since the theft occurred.

A significant portion of the stolen money was converted into Philippine pesos and channelled through three casinos in the Philippines. Philippine authorities subsequently recovered $15 million from the owner of one of the casinos and handed the money back to Bangladesh. The recovery represented an important breakthrough, but a substantial portion of the stolen funds remains untraced.

According to the information provided in the case, about $66.4 million of the stolen amount has yet to be recovered. The difficulty in tracing the remaining funds has been linked to the complex movement of the money through different accounts, financial intermediaries and casino-related transactions.

Seeking to recover the outstanding funds, Bangladesh Bank filed a civil lawsuit in 2019 before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan, three years after the theft. The case targeted parties including Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), the Philippine bank through which part of the stolen money was transferred.

RCBC subsequently sought dismissal of the case. In April 2022, a New York court dismissed Bangladesh Bank’s lawsuit, ruling that the court did not have sufficient jurisdiction to hear the case in the manner it had been brought.

Following that decision, Bangladesh Bank said it had initiated proceedings before a court with appropriate jurisdiction in New York in an effort to continue pursuing the recovery of the missing funds.

The prolonged criminal investigation in Bangladesh, meanwhile, continues to draw attention because of the scale of the theft and the international nature of the transactions. The case involves multiple jurisdictions, banking systems and financial institutions, making the investigation considerably more complex than a conventional domestic financial crime case.

With the next report-submission date now set for 14 September, attention will once again turn to whether investigators can finally place their findings before the court or whether the long-running investigation will face yet another delay.