By Shehan Chamika Silva
The CID today told court that it had obtained detailed report on the suspicious foreign number recovered during the investigation into the alleged $20 million transaction from Bangladesh to Shalika Foundation in Sri Lanka over the theft taken place at Bangladesh Central Bank recently.
Prosecution said that according to the information revealed from the alleged individual, Priyankara Jayadewa, who had introduced a Japan national, ‘Thadashi Sasaki’ to the Shalika Foundation directors and advised the foundation to start a bank account in order to send funds from foreign countries for charity purposes, the suspicious foriegn number was recovered.
The robbery was occurred when some hackers had invaded the Bangladesh Central Bank data base and defrauded $81million funds of it.
Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to a Sri Lankan non-profit organisation was held up because the hackers mis-spelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation.
The CID also informed court that the analytical report of the Moratuwa University on the CPU and two mobile phones recovered during the inquiry was still pending.
The alleged productions were recovered by the CID in the possession of two individuals, W.M.P. Jayadewa and M.P. Niluka Lakshmi.
Earlier, the CID had recorded five statements from alleged directors of the Shalika Foundation, Pradeep Rohitha Dumpkin (Husband of Mrs. Shalika Perera), Don. Miyurin Ranasinghe, Nishantha Nalaka, Sanjeewa Bandara and Shirani Dammika Fernando.
According to the CID officials, the alleged directors of the Shalika Foundation had opened a bank account on January 26, 2016 in a private bank in Bambalapitiya in expectation of obtaining foreign funds for their charitable activities.
The account had been received with $19,999,977.50 amount of money through the Swift Messaging system from Bangladesh on February 04, 2016 on the purpose of a Rural Electrification up gradation project.
However, the Remittance Department in the Bank had detected errors of the transfer which made as an inward remittance and informed Bangladesh Central Bank to verify the transaction.
Later, Bangladesh confirmed a robbery happened at the Central Bank in Bangladesh Central Bank and thereby the further proceedings of the transaction were stopped.
The name of the account holder in Swift Message mis-spelled as "fandation", prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh Central Bank, which stopped the transaction.
However, according to the bank officials statements given to the CID on few occasions, after the alleged transfer of money was made, Jayadewa, Shaleeka Perera and several others had attempted to withdraw the funds.
Later, on February 12, alleged Directors of Shalika Foundation had informed the bank officials to send the amount of money to the one who sent the funds as it was not the amount of money they were supposed to receive from foreign countries.
Earlier, the court imposed a travel ban on the six directors of the Shalika Foundation in connection with the inquiry.
The complaint was lodged by the Sri Lanka Central Bank's Financial Investigation Unit in the CID on March 11 over the alleged transaction.
