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Six senators urge Obama to prioritize cyber crime at G20 summit

Reuters Published on Tue, Aug 30, 2016 / 9:12 AM GMT+8

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NEW YORK (Aug 29): Six US senators have urged President Barack Obama to prioritize cyber crime at this weekend's Group of 20 summit in China, in the wake of the theft of US$81 million ($110 million) from Bangladesh's central bank, according to a letter obtained by Reuters.

In the letter sent to the White House ahead of the Sept 4-5 summit, Sherrod Brown, a senior Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, and five other Democratic senators say they want the US president to press leaders from the world's 20 biggest economies to commit in joint communiques to a "coordinated strategy to combat cyber-crime at critical financial institutions."

The letter, dated Monday, suggests that concern among US lawmakers is growing over the February incident in which hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems and used the SWIFT banking network to request nearly US$1 billion from an account held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.