News
FBI called in to probe Treasury theft Ministry denies French papers missing
View(s):By Damith Wickremasekara
Sri Lankan investigators have reached out to the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as they widen their probe into the Treasury’s US$2.5 million loss linked to an email hacking, a senior CID official said.
They have also contacted a US-based cybersecurity company that specialises in detecting and mitigating email hacking and phishing attacks, he said.
“We have yet to learn where the fraudulent emails originated from, where the funds that were fraudulently diverted from the Treasury are and who was behind the scam. The Financial Intelligence Unit of the Central Bank is also unaware as yet of these details,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
He added that the investigation has become an international probe, with the Australian authorities also assisting the Sri Lankan authorities.
Although the Finance Ministry has acknowledged that it was aware of the hacking in January, the first complaint with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had been lodged on March 28 by a director general of the Finance Ministry. The investigations had begun only after that.
A senior Treasury official said that there is strong suspicion that some of the documents relating to the repayment of loans to other countries have also been either hacked or copied by the miscreants.
He said he has given clear guidelines to officials in the relevant department to thoroughly scrutinise the emails and other related information before transferring the funds.
The CID has seized data of transactions done in the past few months as part of its investigation, the official said.
Meanwhile, the Finance Ministry has drawn attention to last week’s Sunday Times news item headlined “Treasury cyber heist widens; French loan papers missing”. The story reported that some of the documents related to the repayment of a loan from France, too, had gone missing from the Finance Ministry computers.
The ministry statement claims the information is “factually incorrect and misleading”.
The ministry assures that appropriate communication channels have been established with the lenders and repayments are carried out as scheduled in accordance with loan agreements entered into between the Government of Sri Lanka and applicable lenders, the statement says.
The Sunday Times news article was written based on information available at that time after the CID began its inquiries into the disappearance of US$2.5 million from the Treasury and the loss of other documents.
The CID this week informed the Colombo Fort Magistrate Courts that a comprehensive investigation into the disappearance of US$2.5 million was still continuing and whether funds had also gone missing from other payments. The magistrate has given permission for the appointment of a committee of experts from all relevant agencies to conduct a comprehensive probe into the Treasury cyber-heist. (See related story on this page.)
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