How North Korea almost stole $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank
Words by Arfin Kazi
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How North Korea almost stole $1 billion from Bangladesh Bank
In 2016, the global stage was captivated by the name Bangladesh, a nation teeming with 160 million souls and boasting one of the world's most rapidly advancing economies. Yet, it was not the nation's progress that made headlines, but rather a tale of astonishing criminality that shook the very foundations of the financial world. This was no ordinary heist; it was an unprecedented assault that threatened to strip the country's reserve of nearly a billion dollars. The world watched in disbelief as Bangladesh became the target of the largest bank heist in recorded history.
On February 7th 2016, an incident unfolded at the central bank of Bangladesh, also known as Bangladesh Bank, located in the bustling capital city of Dhaka. On the restricted tenth floor, the bank’s employees became aware of a persistent problem that had plagued them for the past two days—a malfunctioning printer. However, this was no ordinary printer; it was the lifeblood of the bank's operations, tirelessly designed to work incessantly, day and night, dutifully churning out transaction reports in real-time.
After many attempts to resolve the issue, the printer finally resumed functioning and began to print out the backlog of transactions of the last days when the printer was non-operational. They discovered an unusually high number of transaction logs, revealing that 35 payment orders involving substantial amounts of money had been transferred from the Bangladesh Bank's foreign accounts to various countries in Asia. The total sum of these transactions amounted to a staggering 951 million US dollars.
The depletion of a significant sum of taxpayers' money from the Bank's reserve was nothing short of a catastrophic blow. As the Bangladesh Bank scrambled to rectify the situation by attempting to cancel the illicit transactions, a stark reality unfolded before their eyes: it was already too late. How could such a monumental lapse occur without a trace of suspicion? After all, orchestrating such transfers required a level of approval that defied easy manipulation. The question lingered in the air, begging for an answer: where did the money go?