The Bangladesh central bank document also sheds light on how banks responded to the "stop payment" SWIFT messages that Bangladesh Bank sent on Feb. 8 to try and halt the illicit transfers. Wells Fargo & Co. responded on the same day, while Bank of New York Mellon Corp. wrote back the next day and said it was unable to locate the transaction in question, according to the document. Citigroup Inc. didn’t respond to four messages, according to the document.
‘Not Breached’
Richele Messick, a spokeswoman at Wells Fargo, declined to comment, as did Kevin Heine, a spokesman for BNY Mellon, and Jennifer Lowney, a Citigroup spokeswoman.
SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides international codes to facilitate payments between banks globally. It can’t comment on the investigation, according to Charlie Booth from Brunswick Group, a corporate advisory firm that represents SWIFT.
“We reiterate that the SWIFT network itself was not breached,” Booth said in an e-mail. Separately, he wrote: “Our priority at this time is to encourage customers to review and, where necessary, to reinforce their local operating environments.”