Dhaka: As the journalists sought comment over a newspaper report that hackers took away money from the Bangladesh Bank reserve, Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul 
Muhith on Monday said the hacking of Bangladesh Bank account to steal money is an unusual situation.  

‘I can’t make any statement. I don’t have any report of the central bank (in this regard). I saw it in the newspapers,’ he said.

Daily Samakal and Banik Barta ran a story on Monday that foreign hackers took away Tk 800 crore from the foreign currency reserve of the Bangladesh Bank.

Replying to a query if any step would be taken in this regard, the Finance Minister said, ‘We’ll see… it’s an unusual situation. I can’t say anything about it (now).’  

In a statement, Bangladesh Bank said it is preparing to take legal steps to recover the money, stolen from its reserve account in the United States. 

'A part of the stolen money has already been recovered, and the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) is active with the anti-money laundering authorities of the Philippines to recover and get back rest of the money," it said. 

The anti-money laundering authorities of the Philippines has also filed a case against the incident and started collecting information about all the frozen bank accounts related to the  hacking incident, the BB statement said. 

According to Bangladesh Bank, the legal steps would be taken once the Philippines anti- money laundering authorities concludes their investigation into the incident. If necessary, it said, it would engage the Stolen Assets Recovery (StAR) of the World Bank (WB). 

BB also said that an expert and a forensic investigation team of the WB have been working with the BFIU team on the incident.

WB effusive about Bangladesh’s economic progress

World Bank’s Vice President for South Asia Region Annette Dixon lauded Bangladesh for its marked progress in many areas.

‘Bangladesh is making very good progress on many development outcomes,’ she told reporters after a meeting with Finance Minister AMA Muhith at the latter residence in the city.

Dixon also expressed her satisfaction over the progress of projects jointly financed by the global lender and the government of Bangladesh.

‘Yesterday I had the opportunity to review a number of projects financed by the government of Bangladesh, the World Bank and other development partners. And I’m extremely impressed on the scale of progress it has made in the project areas,’ she added.

Dixon said she thinks the World Bank’s existence with international knowledge and financing in Bangladesh will help it make considerable progress on reducing poverty and improving the lifestyle of its population.

World Bank’s new country director for Bangladesh Qimiao Fan was present at the one-hour meeting.