Probe on BB reserve heist going on: Kamal

Desk Report: Finance Minister AHM Mostafa Kamal has said the investigation into the reserve heist from the Bangladesh Bank is going on and progress on the matter from time to time is being informed to the government.

“We have already got sufficient evidence on the reserve scam ….the probe is now underway,” he told the House while giving statement under the rules 300 with Speaker Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury in the chair on Tuesday.

After the incident, he said as per the request of the government, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States and the Philippines government had started investigation and recovered US$ 20 million from Sri Lanka instantly.

Besides, an amount of US$ 14.63 million have also been brought back from the Philippines and the probe is going on to recover the rest US$ 66.37 million, he said.

Meanwhile, the government has asked the US based agency to file a case on the issue on June, 2018 and as per the request, the US based agency has filed a case to the US court on behalf of Bangladesh on January, 2019. “We have filed the case within the stipulated time,” he added.

After the incident, he said, the government immediately had taken various steps including recovery of the money, identification of the perpetrators or organizations and to check such incident in future.

The government had also formed a probe committee headed by former central Bank governor Dr Farash Uddin Ahmed. He quickly submitted a report to the government to this end, said the minister.

Besides, the CID police had also instructed to carry out intensive investigation into the incident and the CID’s probe is also going on, he said, adding that the probe committee is yet to publish the report as further investigation is needed.

Terming the reserve scam is an international offense and more foreign agencies are being involved with the scam, the minister said the US intelligence agency FBI has already filed cases against the hackers to their respective countries and the Anti-Money Laundering Council in the Philippines also filed cases against the persons involved in money laundering. _BSS
 

risingbd/Dhaka/February 19, 2019/AKA