DHAKA (TIP): Bangladesh‘s central bank has said it is withholding findings of investigations into the cyber theft of$81 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to avoid tipping off the “foreign perpetrators” of the hack.

Bangladesh Bank lawyer Ajmalul Hossain was responding to comments by Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) in the Philippines – through which the stolen money was routed before disappearing into Manila’s casino industry – that the central bank in Dhaka was wary of releasing reports that could implicate its own officials.

More than six months have passed since hackers broke into the Bangladesh central bank’s computer systems in one of the biggest-ever cyber heists.

Most of the $81 million stolen is still missing and the culprits have not been identified, but Bangladesh Bank has held RCBC accountable for the loss. It has said it may sue RCBC if other efforts to recover the money are unsuccessful.

“Bangladesh Bank knows enough about what happened from the internal and external reports so far obtained by it and others,” the central bank’s lawyer Hossain told Reuters late on Saturday. (Reuters)