The interim government has taken some initial moves to bring back the stolen assets from abroad after the previous Awami League regime overthrown amid a student-led mass uprising on August 5 hardly made any breakthrough in this regard, said officials.
Led by chief adviser professor Muhammad Yunus, the interim government has already reconstituted the national task force on repatriating stolen assets and overhauled the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit as part of its initial moves to recover stolen assets from different parts of the world.聽聽聽聽聽
Economists observe that the success in recovering the stolen money depends largely on the freezing of the smuggled and laundered assets by the governments of the destination countries.聽
The chief adviser has also sought cooperation from some major countries, including the United States, and also from the international bodies, including the United Nations and World Bank, to bring back the stolen assets, particularly those smuggled out and laundered in the past 15 years of the Awami League rule.
The now fallen Awami regime led by Sheikh Hasina faces not only the allegations of stealing money, but those of vote rigging, rights abuse and widespread corruption also, triggering the July student protests.
Drawing attention to the measures by the United States and its Western allies that saw freezing of assets worth around $58 billion of the Russians, economists have said that the interim government should at first persuade the Western countries to freeze the assets of suspected Bangladesh citizens.
Bringing back those assets should be dealt with under long-term plans, said M Masrur Reaz, chairman of think tank Policy Exchange Bangladesh, while talking to 抖阴精品 on Wednesday.
He said that the interim government should also deal with the sensitive issue under a strategy.
Economists have also said that it has become imperative for the interim government to make visible progress in bringing the stolen money back particularly following the chief adviser鈥檚 office鈥檚 estimation that over Tk 1,00,000 crore had been laundered over the past 15 years.
In April, the World Bank, quoting the 鈥楽tate of the tax justice report 2020鈥�, reported that around $3.15 billion outflows from Bangladesh occurred annually through illegal offshore accounts.
On September 29, the national taskforce on repatriating stolen assets was reconstituted with the Bangladesh Bank governor replacing the attorney general at the top.
The attorney general had been steering the taskforce since 2013 but without any聽 major breakthrough in recovering stolen assets.
Available data show that Bangladesh repatriated around $2.6 million from Singapore between 2012 and 2013, and also sent back $1.58 million to the United Kingdom between 2010 and 2015 in relation to money laundering.
The data and information released by local and international agencies and news media, however, show the massive wealth, acquired through illegal means, owned by Bangladeshi citizens in infamous Begumpara (luxury houses in posh neighbourhoods) in Canada, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, the USA, the UK and Malaysia, demonstrating that the efforts by the previous government to check money laundering and prevent terrorism financing bore little fruit in checking capital flight. 聽
Qatar-based media outlet Al Jazeera reported that Saifuzzaman, then land minister and a close ally of the now deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina, bought over 360 luxury properties in Britain alone worth $250 million.
His appetite for real estate spread to Dubai, New York, Singapore and Malaysia.
Mohammed Abdus Sobhan Miah, who worked as a cab driver, pizza chef and drugstore clerk while living in New York City, returned to Bangladesh to serve as an aide to then prime minister Sheikh Hasina. He started secretly snapping up properties in New York worth millions of dollars, according to the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists.
In Malaysia, Bangladeshi citizens occupy fifth position in the list of participants in its 鈥楳alaysia My Second Home鈥� programme after the China, Australia, South Korea and Japan nationals.
Until January 2024, as many as 3,604 Bangladeshi citizens had set up their second home in Malaysia without taking any permission from Bangladesh Bank.
Investment from Bangladesh to other countries can only happen with the country鈥檚 central bank鈥檚 permission.
Praising chief adviser Muhammad Yunus for seeking US assistance to recover the money laundered there by Bangladeshis during meeting with secretary of state Antony Blinken in New York on September 26, Dhaka University economics professor MM Akash called his initiative very encouraging.
Publicly identifying the Bangladeshi citizens with illegal assets in different countries will be a big achievement for the interim government, he said.
According to officials of the Financial Institutions Division under the finance ministry, the World Bank鈥檚 Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative is a time consuming process.
Seeking legal mutual assistance is often preferable, they said, but also mentioned that the Anti-Corruption Commission鈥檚 moves seeking mutual legal assistance from different countries during the immediate past regime made hardly any progress.
Central bank spokesperson Husne Ara Shikha said that they had no update as yet regarding the stolen money repatriation initiative by the interim government.
The spokesperson referred the issue to the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit.
A financial intelligence unit official on condition of anonymity said that the process of repatriating stolen assets was still limited within restructuring a national committee.
The reconstituted committee has yet to fix any date for holding its first meeting, according to the officials.
On August 14, finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed presided over a meeting of the National Coordination Committee on Anti-Money Laundering at the Secretariat.
He directed all relevant bodies to carry out responsibilities within the guideline and regulations.
The illegal outflow of foreign currency, however, excludes the $80 million heist from Bangladesh Bank in 2016 by suspected hackers who laundered the money at casinos in the Philippines.聽
Only $15 million of the stolen fund was sent back following a Philippines court order, while $66 million has yet to be recovered.
