A Dhaka court on Thursday ordered the seizure of $81 million from the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) linked to the infamous 2016 cyberheist.
The heist, which targeted Bangladesh’s foreign reserves, saw hackers exploiting the SWIFT system to transfer $101 million from the Bangladesh Bank’s account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The court’s ruling follows a protracted legal battle in which Bangladesh Bank accused RCBC and several individuals of facilitating the theft and laundering the funds through casinos in the Philippines. The order marks a key milestone in the ongoing efforts by Bangladesh to recover the stolen money, which was initially transferred to four accounts at RCBC’s Jupiter Street branch in Makati City.
On February 4, 2016, hackers made a series of fraudulent transactions using the SWIFT network, diverting $81 million of the stolen funds into the accounts at RCBC. The remaining $20 million was redirected to Sri Lanka, where part of it was later recovered. However, the bulk of the stolen money was swiftly moved across various casinos in the Philippines, which played a role in the laundering process.
The Philippines authorities and RCBC had been under increasing scrutiny due to their involvement in the case. Despite repeated efforts by Bangladesh Bank and the Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) of the Philippines, the funds were initially difficult to trace as they moved through complex layers of transactions across multiple entities. In 2017, RCBC was fined heavily by the Philippines Central Bank for failing to prevent the illicit transfer.
