Bangladesh central bank chief ready to quit over cyber heist

Bangladesh central bank governor Atiur Rahman has offered to resign as tensions escalate with the government after hackers stole about $101 million from the nation's foreign reserves.

Rahman told reporters that he has a resignation letter ready and was waiting for an appointment with Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith on Sunday called Bangladesh Bank's handling of the cybertheft "very incompetent," and accused the central bank of failing to inform him about the missing funds.

"I will do anything and everything possible for the country," Rahman said on Tuesday in Dhaka, the capital. "I will be waiting for a directive from the prime minister. I want to leave with dignity."

The cyberheist has rattled authorities from Bangladesh to Sri Lanka to the Philippines, where much of the stolen money ended up. The central bank said it recovered $20 million of the stolen funds, and $81 million is outstanding.

READ: Don't blame the Fed: Bangladesh seen at fault for bank heist

Rahman was due to retire in August, when he turns 65, after helming the central bank for seven years.

Born to a poor family, Rahman had briefly quit school due to a lack of money before graduating from Dhaka University. He wrote a doctoral thesis titled "Peasants and Classes" at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. He was named Central Bank Governor of the Year for Asia 2015 by the Emerging Markets newspaper, following India’s Raghuram Rajan and China's Zhou Xiaochuan.

"We have embarked on an era of new central banking which has got a distinct developmental focus," Rahman told Bloomberg News last year. "That focus is inclusivity and environmental sustainability, which was never reflected in any monetary policy anywhere in the world."