Remitting firm to return P10M as apology to Bangladesh bank

MANILA, Philippines — The remittance firm responsible for converting most of the stolen $81 million (P3.7 billion) vowed to return P10 million to the central bank of Bangladesh as token of apology for the money laundering scheme.

PhilRem Service Corp. President Salud Bautista said that the P10 million was the company's earnings or handling fee from the conversion to pesos of the amount siphoned by hackers from a Bangladeshi-held account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"We will prepare a check.. that check will represent every centavo our company earned from this series of transactions.... We will be returning P10,474,654," Bautista said at the Senate Blue Ribbon committee inquiry on Thursday night.

Bautista, who appeared baffled over the senators' string of questions, insisted that the firm's involvement was "unintended."

Sen. Sergio Osmeña III noted that PhilRem's move to return P10 million does not free the company from liability, specifically in violating the anti-money laundering law. He noted that the Anti-Money Laundering Council may file a complaint against PhilRem for failing to follow a "know your client" procedure.

"You violated the law... You are also supposed to know your customer... Ignorance of the law is no excuse," Osmeña told Bautista.

The full $81 million was wired to accounts in the Philippines through the Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. branch on Jupiter Street in Makati City. Part of the amount was delivered in cash tranches to casino operators Kam Sin Wong, Eastern Hawaii Leisure Company, and Bloomberry Hotels Inc., which runs Solaire Resort and Casino.

Romualdo Agarrado, an RCBC branch manager, told the Senate panel that P20 million was loaded into the car of Maia Santos-Deguito, the RCBC Jupiter branch manager. The money came from an account under the name of businessman William Go, who has denied owning the account.