by Benjamin Pulta/PNA
The Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC) filed a PHP130-million defamation suit against the Bank of Bangladesh over the backlash from the USD81-million international bank heist where the latter lost money to hackers who set up fake accounts in the Philippine bank.
In a complaint filed before the Makati Regional Trial Court (RTC) Branch 142 last March 6, RCBC and its senior vice president, Ismael Reyes, sought PHP100 million and PHP30 million, respectively, from the foreign bank.
RCBC also asked the Makati court to order the Bank of Bangladesh to stop “defamation and harassment against the plaintiffs (RCBC) including, among others, issuing public statements alleging or tending to damage the reputation of plaintiffs and/or making it appear that plaintiff RCBC is supposedly under any legal obligation to pay or return any amount to defendant Bangladesh Bank and or imputing that any crime has been committed by plaintiff RCBC against defendant Bangladesh Bank.”
RCBC claims that the Bangladesh Bank should be made liable to pay actual, moral, exemplary damages and attorney’s fees in the amount of at least PHP100 million and to pay plaintiff Reyes, at least PHP30 million for similar damages.
The situation arose from the incident in February 2016 when USD81 million from the Bangladesh Bank, which was kept in its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was sent through payment instructions that originated from the foreign bank’s own terminals that interfaced with the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) communication system.
The money was then remitted to three accounts maintained in RCBC’s Jupiter Makati branch.
“In its attempts to retrieve the money it had lost, defendant Bangladesh Bank resorted to casting blame everywhere, and in particular, unfairly and viciously maligning plaintiff RCBC, even when the defendant Bangladesh Bank knew that, at the very moment the payment instructions were sent from the Bangladesh Bank, the loss had already occurred without any action or intervention on the part of plaintiff RCBC,” the petition said.
