Philippine authorities have indicted several figures at the center of last year’s Bangladeshi bank heist while declining to indict two local casino junket operators who also figured prominently in the case.
On Monday, the Philippine Department of Justice filed papers indicting former Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito, along with Michael and Salud Bautista, the husband-and-wife owners of remittance firm Philrem Corporation, for multiple violations of the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
The indictments stem from the February 2016 unauthorized transfer of $81m from Bangladeshi Bank accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York to accounts at the RCBC branch managed by Deguito. The identity of those who initiated the transfer remains unproven, but suspicions have focused on hackers working for the North Korean government.
Deguito, who was fired shortly after the scandal was brought to light, stands accused of eight AML violations, including facilitating the withdrawal of the stolen funds from the RCBC accounts despite having received orders to stop the payments and return the stolen funds.
The Bautistas are facing four counts for ‘washing’ the funds to “conceal the money trail.” Also indicted are Philrem’s AML Compliance Officer Anthony Pelejo and four ‘John Does’ who opened fictitious RCBC accounts through which the funds were funnelled.
Several other senior RCBC execs may yet find themselves under indictment. Last August, RCBC paid a record fine of P1b (US $21.3m) for its apparent lack of interest in observing its AML compliance standards.
However, the DOJ declined to indict junket operators Kam Sim Wong aka ‘Kim Wong’ and Weikang Xu, citing “insufficient evidence to directly link them to the laundering activity.” Much of the case against the pair relied on testimony from Deguito and Salud Bautista that they were acting on orders from the junket operators. Wong surrendered some of the stolen funds to the Bangladesh government last May.
The Inquirer quoted Bangladeshi Ambassador Asad Alam Siam welcoming the news of the indictments, while expressing hope that both the civil and criminal cases surrounding this case “begins soonest possible” and will be “put on fast track as cases of serious public interest since it involves our public money.”
