Chinese returns part of Bangladesh funds stolen by hackers

A Chinese casino junket operator today returned USD 4.63 million of the USD 81 million that hackers stole from the Bangladesh central bank's account in the US Federal Reserve Bank and laundered in Manila's casinos, officials said.
Kam Sin Wong, a longtime Manila-based businessman, surrendered the money from one of the world's largest cyberheists to Philippine anti-money laundering officials and the Bangladeshi ambassador.
Ambassador John Gomes thanked Philippine officials and said Bangladeshi investigators will fly to Manila next week and coordinate with their Filipino counterparts to find out how the stolen money was funneled into the Philippines and who was responsible.

"The whole world is looking upon Bangladesh ... What we are going to do to recover this money," Gomes told a news conference after receiving the partial amount with Philippine authorities at Manila's central bank.
The USD 4.63 million will be kept in a vault at the Philippine central bank until arrangements are made for its return to Bangladesh, said Julia Bacay Abad of the Philippines' Anti-Money Laundering Council.
Wong told ABS-CBN TV that he is also willing to return 450 million pesos (nearly USD 10 million) that was given to him as a debt repayment by one of two Chinese high rollers who allegedly transferred the stolen Bangladesh money to the Philippines.

Wong has denied involvement in the cyberheist but told a recent Senate inquiry he was able to keep some of the money from his casino junket transactions with the two Chinese men.

The USD 81 million laundered in the Philippines is part of USD 101 million that was stolen by hackers from the Bangladesh account at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and then moved online to the Philippines and Sri Lanka.
A Philippine Senate inquiry has shown that the USD 81 million was diverted to bank accounts created with fictitious names at a branch of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp, consolidated and then shifted to the casinos and junket operators through a local remittance company.

Philippine authorities have had a hard time looking into the heist because of the country's strict bank secrecy laws. An anti-money laundering law does not cover Manila's casinos, which one Philippine senator described as a money trail "black hole.