The Bangladeshi Police team in the island investigating the Bangladesh bank heist said they did not think that there was a direct link between those in Sri Lanka and the hackers who stole the money.
"We suspect that they were only using Sri Lanka as a place to transfer money easily. They just may have had associates here," an officer said.
She said the hackers were trying to find the easiest routes to transfer the money out.
The unregulated casino industry in the Philippines made for an attractive destination but the investigators said they were not sure as to why the hackers would have chosen Sri Lanka as their destination for the transfer.
"They have certainly been planning this for a very long time. The Sri Lankan bank officials however have done a very good job in stopping this and we are grateful," she said. The Bangladeshi police team arrived in the island last week to investigate the Sri Lankan link to the case.
In February of this year, hackers tried to steal close to US$ 1 billion from a Bangladeshi Central Bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The hackers however only managed to transfer US$ 20 million to an account in Sri Lankan whilst another US$ 81 million was transferred to accounts in the Philippines. The US$ 20 million in Sri Lankan however was immediately returned to the Bangladeshi Bank but the recovery of money from the Philippines has been a slow and arduous process.
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