B’desh central bank lauds Pan Asia Bank for preventing world’s largest bank heist

Pan Asia Banking Corporation PLC, Sri Lanka’s fastest growing commercial bank, last week received praise from the topmost official of the Bangladesh central bank for the foremost role the bank played in preventing in what could have been the world’s biggest bank robbery in history. 

In February 2016, the unidentified hackers breached Bangladesh Bank’s systems and stole its credentials for payment transfers. The hackers then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with nearly three dozen requests to move money from Bangladesh Bank’s account held at the Fed to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka.

While four such requests by the hackers to transfer a total of US $ 81 million to the Philippines went through, the fifth amounted to US $ 20 million sent to Shalika Foundation – a non-governmental organisation (NGO) – reached through Pan Asia Bank was held up due to the extreme cautiousness followed by the latter at all times as the nature of the transaction was suspicious. 

Pan Asia Bank then alerted the necessary authorities about the suspicious fund transfer, which then transpired as part of the bigger hacking involving the Bangladesh central bank.    

This extreme vigilance of the bank enabled Pan Asia Bank to prevent a nearly US $ 1 billion in transfers into different parts of the world by these hackers of moneys belonging to the Bangladesh central bank and New York Fed last year.

In appreciation of this central role played by Pan Asia Bank, Bangladesh Bank Governor Fazle Kabir, who was in Sri Lanka last week, met with Pan Asia Bank Chief Executive Officer Nimal Tillekeratne at the Central Bank to commend the bank and its employees for their role, which helped them to uncover a web of similar hacks involving its central bank.  

Pan Asia Bank will continue to play its national role as a responsible bank by being on alert at all times to ensure that suspicious transactions carried out at the expense of national interests are reported and brought to the attention of the enforcement agencies.   

Further, as the custodian of the hard-earned moneys of the people, Pan Asia Bank always takes utmost caution when handling moneys and ensures that no activity, which could compromise the safety of the moneys of its customers, is condoned. 

Bangladesh Bank Governor Fazle Kabir presents a token of appreciation to Pan Asia Bank Director/Chief Executive Officer Nimal Tillekeratne in the presence of AGM Operations and Credit Administration Harsha Kurukulasuriya and Acting Manager Central Operations Dilrukshi Guruge

For this purpose, the bank continuously invests on training and development of its highly skilled staff, update its systems to their latest versions and streamline its processes because for Pan Asia Bank, the security of the funds of its customers is a topmost priority.