Swift quick to dismiss Bangladesh’s allegations over cyber fraud scandal
Bangladesh © Wikipedia
Swift has rejected the allegations made by Bangladesh Bank and Bangladesh Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) officials to Reuters about the cyber fraud scandal in February.
A few months ago, hackers stole more than $100 million from the country’s foreign currency reserves. In the ensuing furore, the head of Bangladesh’s central bank, Atiur Rahman, resigned; and Bangladesh’s government publicly blamed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for not spotting the suspicious transactions earlier.
In light of this blame game Swift has also come under attack from Bangladesh.
Swift issued a statement and says it “rejects the false, inaccurate and misleading allegations” made by the bank and Bangladesh’s CID.
Swift says the “accusations have no basis in fact” and adds it was “not responsible for any of the issues cited by the officials, or party to the related decisions”.
The statement also says: “As a Swift user like any other, Bangladesh Bank is responsible for the security of its own systems interfacing with the Swift network and their related environment – starting with basic password protection practices – in much the same way as they are responsible for their other internal security considerations.”
Swift held a meeting with Bangladesh Bank and New York Fed officials in Basel, Switzerland on 10 May to discuss the bank’s security issues and these “baseless allegations”.
After that meeting, Swift issued another statement.
It says: “President William Dudley from the New York Fed and Governor Fazle Kabir from the Bangladesh Bank attended the meeting. The parties provided details on the actions taken and exchanged information about the cyber and physical vulnerabilities illustrated by this event.
“All parties stated their concern over this event and their continued commitment to work together to normalise operations. The parties also agreed to pursue jointly certain common goals: to recover the entire proceeds of the fraud and bring the perpetrators to justice, and protect the global financial system from these types of attacks.”
Banking Technology will provide more updates as and when they happen.
