A court in the United States (US) has dismissed Bangladesh Bank’s (BB) civil case positive news filed against Manila-based bank Rizal Commercial Banking Corp, individuals, and firms over a cyber-hacking that took away $81 million from Dhaka four years ago.
According to CNN Philippines, Bloomberry Resorts Corporation – the parent firm of Solaire Resort & Casino operator Bloomberry Resorts & Hotels Inc. which is one of the positive news defendants – said in a disclosure on Monday that the US District Court in the Southern District of New York junked the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO conspiracy claim filed by BB against the company, as well as the RCBC, Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company, Ltd., Centurytex Trading, and remittance firm Philrem Service Corp. and their officers.
The civil case stemmed from the February 2016 heist where thieves tapped into the system of the US Federal Reserve in New York and authorized multiple fund transfers from the Bangladesh Bank’s account to several fake bank accounts under RCBC.
The funds were wired during a long weekend, which left no time for positive news regulators to block the transactions. The funds were withdrawn, converted into pesos and eventually into poker chips and gambled in Filipino casino tables, where the money trail vanished.
The casino operator said the US court citing an opinion and order, dated March 20, granted the joint motion to dismiss charges filed by defendants for Dhaka’s failure to prove the conspiracy claim.
The disclosure said that the US Court had “further declined to exercise its supplemental jurisdiction over the remaining state law claims,” according to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
The court, however, denied the defendants’ other joint motions to dismiss the case based on lack of subject matter jurisdiction and having another more suitable forum.
Bloomberry said the civil case was filed by BB to collect the amount it allegedly lost to North Korean hackers.
The RICO law allows parties to go after organized syndicates, which covers financial crimes like wire fraud and money laundering. Bangladesh filed the charges in January 2019, three years after the crime.
However, the case is the biggest money-laundering incident involving the Philippines, which prompted lawmakers to require casinos to regularly report big-ticket and suspicious transactions to authorities.
The RCBC filed the suit at a local court in the Philippines on March 6, 2019, over what the BB said were baseless claims of its complicity in the 2016 cyber heist of Bangladesh’s foreign exchange reserves.
The BB filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Manhattan earlier last year, accusing RCBC of involvement in a massive conspiracy to steal its money.
RCBC was fined a record 1 billion pesos ($19.17 million) by the Philippine central bank in August 2016 for its failure to prevent the movement of the stolen money through the bank.
A former treasurer of RCBC and five other workers at the branch where the cash was withdrawn face money laundering charges.
On January 11 last year, a Philippines court held a former manager of an RCBC branch guilty on eight counts of money laundering, the first conviction in the cyber heist.
Just $15 million of the stolen money has been recovered from a Manila junket operator, a role that involves marketing casinos to VIPs.
This civil case was meant to collect the amount allegedly lost by BB to North Korean hackers, who broke into its systems and sent multiple remittances orders to their account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Some remittance orders were allowed to be transacted through four correspondent banks in New York and were remitted to fictitious accounts with RCBC.
After being withdrawn from RCBC, part of the money disappeared in Philippine casinos, where they were used to purchase gaming chips and were played in the casino and junket rooms.
Aside from RCBC and Bloomberry, other defendants are Maia Santos Deguito, Angela Ruth Torres, Lorenzo Tan, Raul Victor Tan, Ismael Reyes, Brigitte Capina, Nestor Pineda, Romualdo Agarrado, Philrem Service Corp., Salud Bautista, Michael Bautista, Centurytex Trading, William So Go, Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co., Ltd., Kam Sin Wong, Weikang Xu, Ding Zhize, Gao Shuhua, and John Does, the disclosure said.
Meanwhile, state-run news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) said the US District Court for the Southern District of New York has dismissed the applications filed by the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC), Solaire Resort and Casino, Mydas Resort and Casino and others.
They filed the applications against a civil case filed by BB against them for recovering the whole money heisted from the central bank’s account with Federal Reserve Bank of New York that took place in 2016, said a BB press release on Monday.
The court dismissed the applications of RCBC and others based on a lack of subject matter jurisdiction as per the forum inconvenient doctrine.
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