IT WAS one of the most spectacular robberies of modern times. In February thieves tried to steal nearly $1 billion from accounts held by Bangladesh Bank, the central bank, at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They were thwarted, but only after spiriting away $101m. Since then Bangladesh’s government has twice suppressed the publication of a report into the heist, most recently last month, on the ground that making it public would jeopardise efforts to retrieve from the Philippines $81m that is still missing. Interviews with officials and others in Dhaka lead to an obvious conclusion: the report will almost certainly never be made public.
The investigating panel’s remit was to establish why the central bank kept the theft secret for a month, whether bank officials were involved in it and how to avert a similar heist in future. Mohammed Farashuddin, a former central-bank governor, who led the probe and once advocated its publication, will not comment on its findings. The word in Dhaka is that the report is being buried because it exposed lapses at the central bank and implicated its officials or consultants. The government has consistently…Continue reading