DHAKA (Web Desk) – Bangladesh’s central bank chief Atiur Rahman resigned on Tuesday over a $101 million cyber theft from the central bank last month.
According to foreign news agency, Mr Rahman has come under pressure after Bangladesh Bank was sharply criticised by AMA Muhith, the finance minister, for being “very incompetent”.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had accepted his offer to resign, which he had said earlier was tendered “for the sake of my country”.
Cyber-thieves are believed to have deployed computer “malware” in their attempt to clone authorisation codes and transfer a total of about $1bn from Bangladesh Bank’s account with the New York Federal Reserve in early February.
The thieves had moved $101m to accounts in Sri Lanka and the Philippines when an intermediary bank spotted an apparent spelling error in the account name of a recipient. Although about $20m was recovered from Sri Lanka, the cyber heist remains one of the largest bank thefts in history.
