Dhaka: The Rizal Commercial Banking Corp in the Philippines ignored the stop order from the New York Federal Reserve Bank and allowed the withdrawal of the laundered money from Bangladesh Bank’s account, reports Inquirer.net.

During a Senate investigation hearing on the $ 81-million money heist thorough computer hacking, Senator Teofisto ‘TG’ Guingona III said that after RCBC had received the huge fund on February 5, the New York Fed issued a ‘stop payment’ order on February 8, which was a banking holiday for Chinese New Year celebrations, according to the Philippine online news portal.

‘The stop payment order was received by your bank, February 8, 2016,’ the senator was quoted as telling RCBC president and CEO Lorenzo Tan.

‘On the morning of February 9, the first banking day, you should have seen the stop payment request. But apparently it was not honoured because the funds were withdrawn. All the funds were withdrawn,’ Guingona said during the money laundering hearing that took place on Tuesday at Senate in Manila.

Guingona referred to the Anti-Money Laundering Council reports and said that the bank ‘responded to the Bangladesh Bank’s stop payment request at 7:45pm of February 9.’

‘That was the end of the day already. Would you care to explain why the stop payment request — which should have been honoured at the very start of the banking day — was not honoured?’ the Philippine senator further said.

He added: ‘Had the stop payment request been honoured, $58 million of the $81 million would have been preserved and would not have gone astray.’

The laundering of such a huge amount of money has made quite a splash in the international media, especially in the Philippines and here in Bangladesh where the governor of the central bank, Atiur Rahman, resigned following the incident.

Hackers swindled $101 million out of Bangladesh Bank from its account with US Federal Reserve Bank in New York.

The incident came to light after foreign media published news items on it on March 7.