BB Reserve Heist: Court orders seize of $81m from Philippine Bank

Staff Reporter :

A Dhaka court has ordered the confiscation of $81 million from the Philippines’ Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), nearly a decade after the notorious 2016 Bangladesh Bank reserve heist.

The order, issued last Thursday (18 September), was disclosed on Sunday by Criminal Investigation Department (CID) chief Md Sibgat Ullah at a press conference in the capital. A copy of the order has already been sent to RCBC officials in Manila.

The directive was made under Section 17(2)(7) of the Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2012, following an application by CID investigators.

The agency said its probe established that senior RCBC officials—including then-president and CEO Lorenzo Tan, Jupiter Branch manager Maia Santos Deguito, and other staff—were directly complicit in laundering the stolen funds.

They allegedly created fictitious accounts through which the hackers routed the money, ignoring Bangladesh Bank’s official request to halt transactions.

Philippine courts have already convicted several RCBC officials, while the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas imposed heavy fines on the bank.

So far, RCBC has returned only $68,000 in February 2016 as an initial repayment.

The Dhaka court has now directed that the entire $81 million be repatriated to the Bangladesh government’s treasury, branding RCBC itself guilty of corporate money laundering under Section 27 of the same Act.

CID officials, however, admitted that it remains unclear how soon the funds can be recovered or whether RCBC has formally acknowledged the order.

The 2016 cyber-heist saw hackers siphon off $101 million from Bangladesh Bank’s accounts with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Of that, $81 million ended up in RCBC accounts in Manila, while $20 million was diverted to a Sri Lankan bank.

Investigators believe the hackers worked in collusion with a “vested group” inside Bangladesh.

Despite the gravity of the crime, the CID probe has moved at a glacial pace, with the report’s submission delayed 88 times since the case was filed in March 2016 by central bank official M Jubayer Bin Huda.

The case remains in limbo, with the next report submission date now set for 29 September 2025.

Meanwhile, hopes are pinned on whether RCBC will comply with the Dhaka court’s confiscation order and finally return the bulk of the stolen reserve funds to Bangladesh.