ON HIS WAY: Bangladesh central bank governor Atiur Rahman resigned on Tuesday, after $81m was stolen from the US account. Picture: REUTERS
ON HIS WAY: Bangladesh central bank governor Atiur Rahman resigned on Tuesday, after $81m was stolen from the US account. Picture: REUTERS

DHAKA — Bangladesh’s central bank chief had resigned on Tuesday, the finance minister said, after hackers stole $81m from the country’s foreign reserves in a cyber-heist that has hugely embarrassed the government.

"He called me yesterday and I’ve asked him to resign. And he has resigned today," Finance Minister AMA Muhith told AFP, referring to the Bangladesh Bank governor Atiur Rahman.

The theft from an account Bangladesh held with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York has raised alarm over the security of the country’s foreign exchange reserves of more than $27bn.

The hackers had attempted to steal almost $1bn and were only prevented from taking more than they did because of a basic typing error, the Bangladesh Bank’s deputy governor told AFP last week.

Mr Rahman was appointed as the governor of the Bangladesh Bank in 2009 and had been due to retire in August.

His resignation comes after Mr Muhith revealed that he was informed of the losses only about a month after they occurred on February 5.

"Bangladesh Bank had the audacity not to inform me. I am certainly going to take action against it," the minister told reporters on Sunday. As details of the scandal emerged last week, Mr Rahman flew to India to attend an International Monetary Fund meeting, leaving the more junior central bank officials scrambling to explain how the hackers managed to take such large sums.

Hackers bombarded the New York bank with dozens of transfer requests, and appeared to be trying to exploit gaps in communication between banks at weekends.

They stole $81m from the account on February 5, transferring the cash electronically to accounts in the Philippines.

The hackers had been attempting to steal a further $850m, but the bank’s security systems and typing errors in some requests prevented the full theft.

Reports said the hackers had misspelled the name of a Sri Lankan nongovernmental organisation, triggering a check of the request, which raised the alarm.

Some of the funds have been recovered, and Filipino authorities have frozen the stolen money following court orders, Bangladesh Bank has said. It suspects the hackers were Chinese.

The US Federal Reserve, which manages the Bangladesh Bank reserve account, denied its own systems were breached.

Mr Rahman said the country’s central bank had now hired international experts in security to prevent any repeat of the incident in future.

AFP