Sri Lankan in Bangladesh cyber heist says she was set up by friend

When Hagoda Gamage Shalika Perera, a small Sri Lankan businesswoman, got a deposit of $20 million in her account last month, she said the funds were expected but had no idea they were stolen from Bangladesh's central bank in one of the largest cyber heists in history. Unknown hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems between February 4 and February 5 and tried to steal nearly $1 billion from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Many of the payments were blocked. But $20 million made its way to Perera's Shalika Foundation before the transfer was reversed. Bangladesh central bank officers said they acted after a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, sought clarification on the transfer because hackers misspelled the company's name as "Fundation." Another $81 million was routed to accounts in the Philippines, and diverted to casinos there, where the trail runs out. The Philippines Senate is holding hearings in the case, but until now, few details had emerged on the Sri Lanka link.
In her first public comments on the case, Perera, a struggling businesswoman who heads Shalika, told Reuters she expected $20 million to come from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) to help fund a power plant and other projects in Sri Lanka. She said she had no direct dealing with JICA, but the deal was arranged by an acquaintance who she met in Sri Lanka but had connections in Japan. Shalika was set up in October 2014 and says in its registration documents that it constructs low-cost houses and provides other social services. Reuters was unable to independently confirm Perera's account or to reach the acquaintance she named, via the email and phone numbers she provided.
JICA, a Japanese government agency that provides official development assistance, said it has no ties with Shalika Foundation, including through any intermediaries. "We have had no exchange with them, and that includes such areas as loans and grants," JICA spokesman Naoyuki Nemoto said. The Sri Lankan police's criminal investigation division declined to comment because the probe is ongoing.
"We are very genuine people. We are not doing any illegal things," said Perera, speaking in English and Sinhalese in an interview in Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. The 36-year-old was accompanied by her husband, Ramanayaka Arachchige Don Pradeep Rohitha Dhamkin, also a director in her company. Perera said she now thinks the acquaintance was either a victim of the hackers or in league with them, and she was hoodwinked into becoming a part of their scheme.
She showed Reuters a copy of an inward remittance advisory from the SWIFT bank messaging system to put the $20 million in her company's account. The remitting entity was shown as a Bangladesh government electricity agency that had taken a loan from JICA in 2010 to fund an electricity project. The head of the Bangladesh government agency, the Bangladesh Rural Electrification Board, said it was "ridiculous" to think that the money could have come from them.