$4.63 MILLION STOLEN FROM BANGLADESH RECOVERED

MANILA: More than $4.5 million of tens of millions recently stolen from Bangladesh and funnelled into Philippine casinos was recovered on Thursday, as a lawmaker in Manila said almost half the haul could still be salvaged.

On February 5, unidentified hackers shifted $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank’s account with the US Federal Reserve to a nondescript bank in Manila, and then to the casinos where the trail went cold.

Representatives for casino agent Kim Wong, who is under criminal investigation after a portion of the stolen money was traced to his account, surrendered the amount in cash to the Philippine central bank on Thursday.

“He kept his promise to retur n the money,” Wong’s lawyer Innocencio Ferrer said in a statement.

Wong testified at a marathon parliament hearing on Tuesday that two high- rollers from Beijing and Macau shifted the $81 million to dollar accounts in Manila’s Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC).

Wong said he did not know the money was stolen from Bangladesh and that he merely helped the two men —also his casino clients — open bank accounts.

He offered to retur n the money, which he said remained in his account in Solaire, one of the Philippine capital’s gleaming billion-dollar casinos.

Earlier, Filipino Senator Ralph Recto said as much as $34 million — almost half of the sum stolen — could be recovered from two casinos and a foreign exchange brokerage based on testimonies from the hearing.