A court has ordered the “seizure” of $81 million from Philippines’ Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation in connection with the 2016 hacking and theft of Bangladesh’s foreign reserves from the Federal Reserve in New York.

Jasim Uddin Khan, Superintendent of Police (Media) at Criminal Investigation Department (CID), confirmed the matter through a press note on Sunday morning. Additional details will be provided at a press conference in the afternoon, it added.

An estimated $101 million had been stolen from the Bangladesh Bank’s account at the Fed in February 2016 using 35 fake SWIFT payment instructions.

Of this amount, an estimated $81 million is believed to have been transferred to the Philippines.One of these messages attempted to transfer $20 million to a “fake” non-government organisation (NGO) in Sri Lanka, but it was blocked at the last minute due to suspicion over a spelling mistake.

The remaining four payment instructions transferred $81 million to four accounts opened with “fake information” at the Jupiter Street branch of the RCBC in the Philippines’ Makati City.

Shortly afterwards, the money was withdrawn from the bank and put into three casinos in the form of pesos, the local currency of the Philippines, through the Philrem remittance company.

Although $15 million was eventually recovered from the owner of one casino and handed over to the Bangladesh government, there has been little progress in recovering the rest since then. After changing hands at the gambling tables, there was little trace of where it had gone.

Under the circumstances, Bangladesh Bank filed a case against RCBC in a New York court for the theft of reserve funds.

The case, filed on May 27, 2020 against 20 individuals and organisations, accuses them of money laundering, theft, embezzlement, aiding or abetting such activities, fraud, and aiding or abetting fraud.