RCBC branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito told the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee Thursday that casino junket operator Kim Wong had referred all the accounts used to hold the $81 million that hackers stole from Bangladesh Bank that was then laundered through local casinos.
Responding to a question from Senator Juan Ponce Enrile, she said in an executive session that Wong was a friend of Lorenzo Tan, president of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp.
Deguito also said Tan had told her “to take care of that guy,” referring to Wong. She said she had gathered from that statement that Wong should be given preferential treatment.
But Tan denied Deguito’s account, saying it was illogical.
“Why would I tell her to take care of this guy when he was her client in the previous bank?” he said, referring to East West Bank, where Wong was Deguito’s client.
Asked if he knew Wong, Tan said: “She [Deguito] knows him better. I have no business with him. I met him sometime in 2002 as a restaurant owner. Since then, we didn’t see each other for 12 to 14 years.”
He also denied inviting Deguito to join RCBC when she left East West Bank.
“We have an email trail that she was interviewed by three [people]. I never interviewed branch managers,” he said, noting there were five layers between him and branch managers.
Earlier, at the public hearing, a former branch employee testified that he saw a paper bag stuffed with P20 million—believed to be part of the $81 million that hackers stole from the Bank of Bangladesh—loaded into Deguito’s car.
The branch’s former customer service head Romualdo Agarrado said he remembered that on the day the $80 million arrived on Feb. 5, the branch’s senior customer relationship officer Angela Torres requested P20 million from the bank’s Cash Center.
When an armored van arrived at 5:30 p.m., he and Torres counted the money and transferred it to the teller.
“Between 6:30 and 6:45 p.m., the teller put the money in a box, counted it again and placed it inside the room of the branch manager, Maia Deguito,” he said.
Deguito was out of the branch at the time, he said.
He said the bank messenger, Jovy Morales, then transferred the money from the box into a paper bag and loaded it into Deguito’s car with Torres’ help.
“I saw it clearly because I was sitting at my table fronting the main door of the branch. It was made of glass so it could be clearly seen outside, even though it was 6:30 or quarter to 7:00 p.m…. I saw it personally,” Agarrado told the Senate panel chaired by Senator Teofisto Guingona.
On Feb. 9, when there was a recall of funds, he informed Deguito who Agarrado said gave him “a blank stare.”
After that, a series of recall of funds instructions arrived.
At the time, Agarrado said, he did not know that the accomplished deposit and withdrawal slips were already with the teller. He said he did not know who the signatories were.
Later in the day, he said, Torres was called to Deguito’s room.
“She said so many things. What stuck in my mind was.. she said ‘I would rather do this than have me [and my family] killed,” Agarrado testified.
Frightened by what he heard, he returned to his table.
On Feb. 12, the bank’s investigation began and some auditors interviewed Torres, Morales and Deguito.
When Enrile asked Deguito about Agarrado’s testimony and asked if a threat had been made upon her life, she denied the statements and said she would disclose everything in an executive session. With Maricel V. Cruz
But RCBC legal counsel Maria Cecilla Estavillo said Torres was also ready to testify about what Deguito said at the time.
Agarrado recalled that a few days after huge sums of money were withdrawn, he was asked to attend a dinner at the home of one of the bank officers in Forbes Park. He was surprised to see Deguito there, assuring other bank officers that she could provide them lawyers.
“When we were inside the room, Maia did all the talking,” Agarrado said. “She said she has lawyers… and that one lawyer suggested to her that we should compute our retirement. Would P5 million be enough?”
Before six senators voted to have an executive session, Enrile asked the panel to cite Deguito for contempt for refusing to answer questions.
Deguito had invoked her right against self incrimination because the Anti-Money Laundering Council has filed cases against her.
The bank’s lawyer, Estavillo, also told the Senate that the accounts in the name of William Go were fake, and that an internal investigation showed that his signature on the peso and dollar accounts and those on the withdrawal slips did not match.
“These were not signed by one and the same person. There was a… forgery. The bank considers these accounts do not belong to William So Go,” Estavillo said.
She also said only $66 million of the entire $81 million electronically stolen from the Bangladesh Bank ended up in the Go account. She said the remaining $15 million went to another account, but said they could not disclose it due to the Bank Secrecy Law.
The $65 million came from the accounts of Michael Francisco Cruz, Jessie Christopher Lagrosas, Alfred Santos Vergara, Enrico Teodoro Vasquez, who are Deguito’s co-respondents in the money laundering case.
From Go’s account, the stolen funds from Bangladesh Bank were transferred to money transfer company Philrem Services Corp.
Philrem converted this into pesos and delivered the money in cash tranches to a registered casino junket operator named Weikang Xu, Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company, and Bloomberry Hotels Inc. (Solaire Resort & Casino).
An opposition lawmaker said the money laundering scandal happened because of the lax implementation of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
“It is easy to point to the law for supposedly being deficient. But the law has ample safeguards against the criminal use of bank services. In fact, Congress amended and reinforced the law on two occasions already,” House deputy minority leader and LPG-MA Rep. Arnel Ty said.
“It seems the problem concerns the enforcement of, and compliance with the provisions of the law. For instance, the cyber thieves were able to move the $81 million using bank accounts fraudulently created under assumed names, and yet the law imposes rigorous requirements on bank customer identification,” he said. – With Maricel V. Cruz