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Saturday, October 12, 2024

DoJ after hackers’ $81m

THE government will help recover the $81 million stolen by Bangladeshi hackers from their central bank and then laundered in the Philippines, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II told Bangladeshi officials on Wednesday.

Aguirre made the commitment during a meeting with the Bangladeshis led by Ambassador to the Philippines John Gomes.

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During that meeting, they discussed the pending money-laundering cases at the Justice Department against former Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. branch manager Maia Santos-Deguito, businessman Kim Wong and executives of the remittance firm Philrem Service Corp.

“This case involving about $15 million is pending, but I think within one month they should be resolving that case and we will be getting back our money,” Gomes told reporters after the closed-door meeting.

He said Aguirre, like the other officials they had met over the matter, made a commitment to resolve it “very soon.”

Gomes said he was pleased that Philippine officials “have all given me their commitment that they will do everything that is required to recover the money.”

‘‘They are very cooperative with us and I am quite pleased that this [case] is going to be resolved very quickly.

“I am very optimistic, I am actually very much pleased whenever I meet the new officials the way they are coming forward to help us get our money back.”

Gomes said he and other Bangladeshi officials would also meet with Solicitor General Jose Calida and officials of the Anti-Money Laundering Council and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

They had earlier met with senators and the top executives of the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. for their bid to recover the rest of the $81-million stolen money.

Apart from the $15 million covered by the Justice Department, another $2.7 million was recovered and frozen by Pagcor, leaving $63 million more missing from the stolen money.

Gomes earlier asked the Senate to reopen its investigation into the case to determine where the rest of the stolen money had gone. 

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