SWIFT help for Bangladesh bank that lost US$81 million in world’s biggest cyber heist
- Court documents say hackers from North Korea used fraudulent orders on the SWIFT payments system to steal the money
- The money was sent to accounts at a Philippines’ bank and then vanished into the casino industry in the Philippines
International payments network SWIFT said it had signed an agreement with Bangladesh’s central bank to help it rebuild its infrastructure after hackers used it to steal US$81 million in 2016 in the world’s biggest cyber heist.
Unidentified hackers, suspected to be from North Korea, carried out the heist by breaching Bangladesh Bank’s systems and using the SWIFT network to send fraudulent money transfer orders to the New York branch of the US central bank, with which the Dhaka bank has an account.
SWIFT’s comments came after the New York Fed on Friday agreed to provide “technical assistance” to Bangladesh Bank in its lawsuit against Manila-based Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC).
RCBC was used to funnel the money, much of which disappeared into the casinos of the Philippines.
RCBC has called the legal action Bangladesh Bank filed on Thursday as beyond the US jurisdiction, “completely baseless” and “nothing more than a thinly veiled PR campaign” to shift blame from itself.
“SWIFT, the New York Fed and Bangladesh Bank have worked together since the cyber fraud event occurred … to recover the entire proceeds of the crime and to bring the perpetrators to justice in cooperation with law enforcement from other jurisdictions,” SWIFT said in a statement.
