Bangladesh official steps down over $81m heist

Bangladesh’s central bank governor Atiur Rahman has resigned after $81 million (€73m) was stolen from the bank’s account at the New York Fed in one of the largest cyber heists in history.

Unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank and transferred $81 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to casinos in the Philippines between February 4-5.

Rahman’s resignation came days after the Bangladesh finance minister said the central bank did not inform him about the heist, and that he learned of it only a month later when news first appeared in the media.

“I resigned and the prime minister accepted it,” Rahman, a widely respected banker in his second term at the bank, told Reuters.

Criminals had tried to withdraw, $951m, but they misspelled the word ‘foundation’ as ‘fandation’ in the instructions, and Deutsche Bank, which has handling that transaction, held it up to check the typo. That, and other irregularities including the high volume of transfers, saved Bangladesh from losing even more than it did. More than $30m of the money that was stolen was handed over in cash to an ethnic Chinese man in Manila, a Philippines senator looking into the suspected laundering scheme said.