News
Expert committee to conduct probe into Treasury heist
View(s):By Ranjith Padmasiri
The Colombo Fort Magistrate’s Court has given permission to appoint an expert committee comprising representatives of all relevant agencies to conduct a comprehensive probe into the USD 2.5 million Treasury cyber-heist.
Acting on a request from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Colombo Fort Magistrate Isuru Neththikumara ordered that the expert committee should comprise the Sri Lanka Computer Emergency Readiness Team (SL-CERT), the Dean of the Colombo University’s School of Computing and the Government Analyst’s Department.
The Computer Crime Investigation Division of the CID reported the incident to court for the first time this week, detailing that they commenced investigations following a complaint lodged on March 24. The CID also told court that the payments had gone through in line with fraudulent payment instructions received via e-mail despite the Treasury being warned of there being the possibility of a cyber-theft. It added that investigations are ongoing to determine whether funds had gone missing during other payments.
Based on investigations conducted thus far, the CID informed court that it has been revealed that a total of USD 2.5 million had been diverted to another bank account despite warnings being made regarding the matter. They added that 5 Treasury officials who had access to the allegedly compromised email account had been directly involved in transferring the funds.
After considering the facts provided by the CID, the magistrate imposed an overseas travel ban on the 5 Treasury officials, who have also been interdicted over the incident. The magistrate further ordered that his order be conveyed to the Controller General of Immigration and Emigration. He also ordered the heads of banks where the 5 Treasury officials had maintained accounts to provide details of these bank accounts to the CID.
The magistrate ordered the CID to conduct a comprehensive inquiry into whether there had been any criminal intent in the transfer of the funds and to identify those responsible. He also ordered the CID to take steps to ensure that such crimes do not reoccur.
The CID informed court that the Australian government had approved loans for 5 projects being undertaken in Sri Lanka, and that the loan payments had been provided through the Treasury’s Department of External Resources. The Treasury had subsequently commenced repaying these loans to Export Finance Australia under Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring programme. It was the e-mail communications involving this bilateral debt repayment process that had allegedly been compromised to fraudulently divert funds meant as debt repayments to another account.
The CID further informed court that though the real e-mail of the Australian agency to which the payments were to be paid was exportfinance.gov.au, the domain had been altered as exportfinance.av.com. The fact that the domain name of the Australian agency had been altered had been flagged on October 28 last year by a private firm, but the warning had been disregarded and the funds had been transferred, the CID revealed.
The court was informed that investigations conducted thus far have not revealed that anyone had gained unauthorised access to the Treasury e-mail address in question, and that an examination of the External Resources Department’s database had indicated some data had been erased.
In answer to a question raised by the magistrate, the CID stated that no suspects had been identified in the case as yet, and that investigations are continuing to determine if the data had been erased with criminal intent.
The magistrate informed the CID to report on the progress of the investigation to court on June 3.
The best way to say that you found the home of your dreams is by finding it on Hitad.lk. We have listings for apartments for sale or rent in Sri Lanka, no matter what locale you're looking for! Whether you live in Colombo, Galle, Kandy, Matara, Jaffna and more - we've got them all!