Banking secretary too was unaware of the fund heist

Finance Minister AMA Muhith yesterday said the banking secretary has been made an officer on special duty for being uninformed about the cyber heist at the Bangladesh Bank.

On February 4, a band of hackers broke into the BB's systems and made off with $101 million of its deposits with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Banking Secretary M Aslam Alam was unaware of the cyber break-in incident right away.

"He is not involved [with the BB issue] but as a secretary he should have knowledge about it. Unfortunately, he did not know," Muhith told reporters after a meeting yesterday.

On Tuesday, Alam was made an officer on special duty, but the finance minister did not give any reason for the decision at the time. Privatisation Commission member Mohammad Yunusur Rahman has been appointed the new secretary of the banking division.

Muhith also said the state of various systems of the BB is not healthy, so serious reforms would be required. A new governor has been appointed and he will work on these issues, he added.

Former finance secretary Fazle Kabir has been appointed the new governor, the BB said in a statement yesterday.

The immediate past governor of the central bank Atiur Rahman handed in his resignation on Tuesday, which became effective from yesterday.

Following the hacking of BB payment systems on February 4, Rahman appointed World Informatix as the forensic investigator of the case.

The finance minister said the new BB governor will decide if World Informatix will continue to spearhead the investigations.

The government also decided to cancel the contracts of two BB deputy governors, Abul Kashem and Nazneen Sultana.

The appointment of two new deputy governors is a lengthy process, Muhith said.

For this, a search committee has to be formed first; the committee will then nominate names for the post of deputy governors.

Meanwhile, the Criminal Investigation Department yesterday started its investigation into the BB heist.

A CID team held meetings with officials at different levels of the central bank.

Mirza Abdullahel Baqui, special superintendent of the CID, told reporters that they have just started collecting information.

He said nobody has yet been interrogated as a suspect. Information is being collected from those who were involved with the incident.

Baqui said, after analysing the collected information it can be said whether anybody in the country was involved with the heist.

"What actually happened cannot be said before the completion of the investigation. Maybe it was hacked or compromised in some other way," he added.