The Finance Department on Thursday assured Bangladesh it fully supports efforts to recover $81 million worth of funds lost in a cyber heist in February.
Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III told retired Bangaldesh Ambassador to the Philippines John Gomes the Philippines was giving its “100 percent support” to recover the funds.
Dominguez, however, said the recovery efforts would have to go through the proper legal procedures for Bangladesh’s own protection so that no other party could contest its rightful claim to the money in the future.
Dominguez said the Philippines would assist in the initial recovery of $15 million that a Manila court declared forfeited on July 7and ordered kept in the vault of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
“We want to assure you that the Philippine government, including all its instrumentalities from the central bank, the DoJ (Department of Justice), DFA (Department of Foreign Affairs), and of course the AMLC (Anti-Money Laundering Council), are 100 percent behind you… ,” Dominguez said during a meeting with Gomes at the Land Bank of the Philippines office in Makati City.
“We have, however, a legal system that has to be respected and this system has to be followed so that whatever claim you are awarded, nobody can challenge that in the future,” Dominguez added.
Dominguez has asked representatives from the other agencies helping in the cyber-heist probe to attend the hour-long meeting.
They were DoJ chief counsel Ricardo Paras III, Bangko Sentral Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr., AMLC executive director Julia Bacay Abad and Jeffrey Salik, director of the South and Central Asia Division of the DFA. Also present at the meeting with the ambassador was Finance Undersecretary Maria Edita Tan.
“It’s a blessing that you have been able to give us your time, especially you have brought the AMLC, DFA, and DoJ, all here. So I guess I’m surprised,” Gomes said.
The amount of $15 million came in two batches—one totaling $4.63 million and the other P488,280,000, or roughly $10.61 million—that casino junket operator Kim Wong hadturned over in the course of the Senate investigation into the cyber heist.
The DoJ filed a petition before the Manila court seeking the forfeiture of $15 million in favor of Bangladesh.
The DOJ was assisting Bangladesh in recovering the funds under the UN Convention on Transnational Organized Crimes, where the Philippines and Bangladesh are signatories, Paras added.
Another P107.35 million of the stolen fund, roughly equivalent to $2.3 million, was voluntarily frozen by Bloomberry Resorts and Hotels Inc. (Solaire casino), and could go through the same legal procedures, Paras said.
Dominguez said another target of the recovery effort is the amount of $17 million, which, according to the Bangladesh ambassador, was pinpointed in the Senate probe to be in the hands of the remittance firm PhilRem Service Corp.
