the ninth floor and headed to the back
office of the accounts and budgeting department.
This was the most restricted part of the building.
He was there to deal with a problem, one that had been
plaguing the office for the last few days. You see,
the printer wasn't working. This was kind of a big deal.
It was causing a real disruption. The automated printer,
which was hooked up to the bank's software, was supposed
to work around the clock 24/7, printing out the bank's transaction
reports in real-time. Due to this technical glitch, however, the
printer tray remained empty. Much of the day was spent trying to
fix the issue, and after a great deal of effort, there was success.
They were able to restart the printer. And so, the backlog of transaction
reports started rolling out, one by one. Now, it soon became apparent that
something wasn't quite right. There were more statements than expected.
When they took a closer look, they found 35 suspicious payment orders for
what were ridiculously large sums of money. Having supposedly been
transferred from the Bangladesh Bank's own account to various other
accounts in other countries. Certainly, no one from their bank had
authorized it and the SWIFT security system in place was unbreachable.
As the director sifted through the suspicious transfer requests, the true
scale of the situation started dawning on him. The transfers totalled to
almost one billion US dollars, an absurd amount, a significant chunk of the
nation's reserves. Where were they going? Who was responsible? Panic ensued
as the workers scrambled to stop the payments. But, it was likely too late.
The ill-timed printer malfunction from earlier had caused an unfortunate
delay in their response.
It seemed Bangladesh had just lost a billion dollars.