The Philippine Central Bank fined a local commercial bank a record $21 million on Friday for its connection to a bank hack in Bangladesh earlier this year.
The Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation agreed to pay the fine, affirming what it called its "strong commitment to ensure the stability of the country's financial system".
According to Bangladesh's ambassador to the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has said that he was committed to returning the $81 million stolen from Bangladesh's foreign reserve account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and funneled through bank accounts and casinos in Manila in February.
Only a fraction of the stolen money has been recovered.
SWIFT, a global financial network used by 11,000 banks to transfer billions of dollars daily, has issued an urgent warning to customers to install a software upgrade after a number of cyber incidents were discovered, indicating that the hacking heist in Bangladesh was not an isolated incident.
