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The submission of the investigation report in the Bangladesh Bank reserve theft case has been postponed yet again, with a Dhaka court setting September 14 as the new deadline.
The delay marks the 97th postponement of the investigation report. If the deadline is pushed back three more times, the report submission date will have been postponed 100 times.
The report was scheduled to be submitted on Sunday before Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Mohammad Sefatullah’s court in Dhaka. However, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), which is investigating the case, failed to submit it.
The court subsequently fixed September 14 as the new date.
Prosecution Department Sub-Inspector Rokunuzzaman confirmed the development.
The case stems from the theft of $81 million from Bangladesh Bank’s account at the US Federal Reserve Bank on February 5, 2016, through fraudulent SWIFT messages. The stolen funds were subsequently transferred to the Philippines.
Investigators initially suspected that the money had been siphoned out of the country with the assistance of a local network.
Bangladesh Bank’s then Joint Director of the Accounts and Budgeting Department, Zubair bin Huda, filed the case with Motijheel Police Station in Dhaka on March 15, 2016, under the Money Laundering Prevention Act. No individual was named as an accused in the case at the time.
The CID has been investigating the case but has repeatedly sought more time and has yet to submit its report.
The stolen $81 million was converted into Philippine pesos and distributed among three casinos. The Philippine government later recovered $15 million from the owner of one of the casinos and returned the money to Bangladesh.
However, the whereabouts of the remaining $66.4 million remain unknown.
Three years after the theft, Bangladesh Bank filed a lawsuit in 2019 in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York seeking to recover the stolen funds. Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC), which was allegedly involved in the transfer of the money, sought dismissal of the case.
In April 2022, a New York court dismissed Bangladesh Bank’s case against RCBC, ruling that it did not have sufficient jurisdiction to hear the lawsuit.
Bangladesh Bank subsequently said it had filed another case before a New York court with the appropriate jurisdiction.
The prolonged delay in the CID investigation report has kept the criminal proceedings in Bangladesh unresolved more than a decade after one of the world’s most notorious cyber-heists involving a central bank.