Some Bangladesh central bank officials deliberately exposed its computer systems and enabled hackers to steal $81 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in February, a top police investigator in Dhaka told Reuters on Monday. The comments by Mohammad Shah Alam, head of the Forensic Training Institute of the Bangladesh police's criminal investigation department, are the first sign that investigators have got a firm lead in one of the world's biggest cyber heists, which had prompted months of international finger-pointing. Arrests are soon likely, he said.
On Thursday, the head of a Bangladesh government panel that investigated the heist said five bank officials were guilty of negligence but that they were only unwitting accomplices. Alam told Reuters his investigations had discovered that some bank officials had knowingly created vulnerabilities in the bank's connection to the SWIFT global messaging and payments system.
"Bangladesh Bank's SWIFT network was made insecure by some bank employees in connivance with some foreign people," he said. "They knew what they were doing." He declined to name the suspects or say how many there were. Alam said investigators were now trying to find out how the mid-ranking officials were connected to the hackers and whether they benefited financially from the heist. Asked if the officials would be arrested, he said: "We are very close to it."
The apparent momentum comes after months of trading blame among Bangladesh Bank, the New York Fed, SWIFT, and a Philippine lender that received much of the stolen funds before they disappeared. The heist prompted an international probe headed by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Separately SWIFT, or the Society for World-wide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, told Reuters its messaging system has been targeted in a "meaningful" number of other attacks this year using a similar approach as the Bangladesh incident. Bangladesh Bank spokesman Subhankar Saha declined to comment on Alam's comments. A New York Fed spokeswoman also declined comment.
Another investigator in Dhaka, who declined to be named, said more than 100 Bangladesh Bank employees had been interviewed in connection with the heist, and some were barred from leaving the country. In early February, the world economy in a very serious manner in case it turns into a red-hot confrontation between the two, for countries like Pakistan the expected shifting of sands in the economic world order as a consequence of anti-globalization movement led by the world's rich capitals would mean the end of the debilitating Washington Consensus doctrine, which was initiated by the first post-Cold War US President, Bill Clinton, and carried out by the successive administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. This doctrine is based essentially on the principle of promoting, protecting and preserving the prosperity of the US and the West at the cost of the poverty-stricken developing world. Indeed, as the poor countries became poorer the rich ones became richer under the doctrine of the Washington Consensus.
China and India escaped the consequence because they had preferred to develop on their own rather than using for the purpose the crutches of the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the IMF, the three instruments of Washington Consensus designed to essentially promote growth which even in rich countries ended up inculcating massive inequalities. And in the poor countries like Pakistan this inequality phenomenon became really crass as a consequence of the prescriptions dished out by the Fund, WB and ADB focusing on macroeconomic stability that only pushed such countries further down the poverty pole because of resulting stagnation. Indeed, had the world oil prices not collapsed in the meanwhile, countries like Pakistan would have gone bankrupt by now.
So, it is in the national interest of Pakistan, especially it is incumbent on its official economic managers to keep a close watch on the US, the UK and China to see what kind of economic policies these countries would formulate to extricate themselves from the globalization code. Of course, Pakistan is not even an extra in this game of economic giants, but it would certainly suffer from any fall-out from the ensuing confrontation among these giants. So, we need to be on our toes to be able to keep the consequent damage to our national economy at the very minimum.
The growth of international trade in the globalise economy has been exacerbating income inequalities, both between and within industrialised and less industrialised nations. Consequently, global commerce has been increasingly dominated by transnational corporations which seek to maximize profits without regard for the development needs of individual countries or the local populations.
Meanwhile, the undeclared protectionist policies in industrialised countries have been preventing many producers in the Third World from accessing export markets; the volume and volatility of capital flows in this environment has been increasing the risks of banking and currency crises, especially in countries with weak financial institutions.
Globalization has also given rise to an unhealthy competition among developing countries to attract foreign investment which has led to a "race to the bottom" in which countries have dangerously lowered environmental standards. Also cultural uniqueness has been lost in favour of homogenisation and a "universal culture" that draws heavily from American culture.
Critics of economic globalization often point to Latin America as an example where increased openness to international trade had a negative economic effect. Many governments in Latin America liberalised imports far more rapidly than in other regions. In much of Latin America, import liberalisation has been credited with increasing the number of people living below the USD $1 a day poverty line and has perpetuated already existing inequalities. Pakistan has also suffered from similar consequences of import liberalisation.
So, in view of what appears to be uncertain times ahead, especially in the context of world economy, some thinkers in the US have begun advising China to join in the move to discipline globalization rather than treat it as a development to undermine its national economic interests.
In a recent article published in the Foreign Affairs magazine on December 9, 2016 (The End of Globalism: Where China and United States Go From Here) Eric X. Li has pleaded with China to look in the mirror to understand the ways in which the United States and Europe are changing for good.
"The Chinese have been among the loudest voices criticising the one-size-fits-all model of globalism and calling for the world's nations to be allowed to pursue their own development paths. As Chinese President Xi Jinping famously said, "One could only know if a pair of shoes is good by wearing them." Trump, it seems, is ready to try on some new ones for America. Meanwhile, Trump's non-interventionist approach to the world-he has emphasised that it was "a dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy,"-must hearten the Chinese.
"China understands a thing or two about building infrastructure. And as his many campaign speeches indicated, Trump knows it. On the campaign trail, Trump complained loudly that, compared with China, America's infrastructure was "third world." China could bring its considerable capacities to bear in the United States. For one, it could bring the United States into the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and supply industrial capacity on favourable terms and relatively quickly. This would significantly benefit China, which needs to deploy its excess capital and capacity. And there is no better place to do so than in its largest trading partner.
"Even on trade, there is potential for convergence. The globalise elite narrative presents a dichotomy between free trade and protectionism. Anyone who eschews global standardisation risks being labelled a protectionist. (In fact, China has frequently been accused of protectionism on those grounds.) But the globalises' dichotomy is false. It is possible to promote trade and to protect legitimate national interests at the same time. For example, China's proposal for trade expansion in Asia Pacific, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), specifically allows for many differentiations on tariffs and industry standards based on participating countries' varied economic and political conditions.
"China harbours no designs to somehow replace the United States as the dominant world power. It naturally seeks to reclaim a leadership position in its neighbourhood. And America needs to focus on rebuilding itself. If the two nations have the wisdom and pragmatism to work together on those goals, to live and let live, they can perhaps formulate a new consensus on global governance that will lead to a more stable world.
"Globalism has committed suicide. A new world order has been born. Let's engage it now."
Comments
Comments are closed.