The funds were used to buy casino chips or pay for losses at venues including Bloomberry Resorts Corp.’s Solaire Resort & Casino and Melco Crown Philippines Resort Corp.’s City of Dreams Manila, according to the paper. There was no suggestion in the report the banks or casinos named were complicit with any improper movement of funds.
‘Every Stage’
Bloomberry Resorts investor relations director Leo Venezuela and City of Dreams Manila Vice President Charisse Chuidian didn’t reply to calls and phone messages.
Funds were later dispatched into accounts outside the Philippines, the paper said, including to Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority declined to comment, as did the Hong Kong police.
The Inquirer separately reported the head of the Rizal branch where the transactions occurred had made a statement that top bank officials were aware of the transactions “at every stage.”
Rizal’s shareholders “are fully committed to comply with all banking laws and regulations, in particular those on money laundering,” Vice Chairman Cesar E.A. Virata said in a statement Wednesday. In a separate statement, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer Lorenzo Tan condemned “any insinuations that the top management of the bank knew of and tolerated alleged money laundering activities in one branch.”
The exact amount stolen from Bangladesh is a moving target, as is what happens next in the dispute with the Fed.
While Muhith said the Fed was responsible for at least $100 million, another Bangladeshi central bank official who asked not to be identified said $20 million of a $101 million total had been recovered from an account held in Sri Lanka, leaving $81 million unaccounted for. That figure matches the amount Rizal’s Virata said the bank was investigating.
“The Philippines still struggles to establish a robust bureaucracy that can properly supervise and regulate the financial system,” said Richard Javad Heydarian, an assistant professor of political science at De La Salle University. There are still a “myriad of loopholes in the Philippines’ legal and law enforcement system.”