The Philippine bank at the center of those stolen Bangleshi millions has been hit with a record fine for its compliance failures.

On Friday, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) slapped a P1b (US $21.3m) “supervisory enforcement action” on Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) for not raising enough questions when $81m in questionable funds flowed through its system to the local gaming industry.

The fine, the largest ever imposed on a Philippine financial institution, is a marked departure from the BSP’s traditional penalty of P30k per day for non-compliance matters. The fine is to be paid in two tranches of P500m, the first half to be paid immediately, while the second will follow 12 months later.

The $81m in question was stolen from Bangladeshi central bank accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York by still unknown cyber-thieves in February. The funds were transferred to RCBC accounts, then transferred again through a local remittance firm to local junket operators and two local casinos: Bloomberry Resorts’ Solaire Manila and Leisure & Resorts World Corp’s Midas Hotel & Casino. To date, only about $18m of these funds has been recovered.