The country will observe International Anti-Corruption Day today with a fresh call to combat the widespread corruption upholding the spirit of the student-people uprising.
Experts said that corruption affected every aspect of the society in the past 15 years of the Awami League rule due to lack of governance and accountability, and indifference of the Anti-Corruption Commission.
The Awami League, in its election manifestos, had announced a zero-tolerance policy against corruption and then AL lawmakers, ministers, and deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina had also promised to fight corruption, but the announcements remained on paper only.
People have witnessed massive corruption, including money laundering, abuse of power, accumulation of illegal wealth and embezzlement of money from banking and financial institutions in the name of loans, in the past 15 years.
The Anti-Corruption Commission, however, failed to check the graft as its independence was also held hostage to the successive governments in the past, the experts said.
The governments, by dint of its authority to appoint the top brass of the commission, placed their favoured officers in the commission and maintained comfortable control over it, they said.聽
As a result, the commission鈥檚 ability to act independently in fighting corruption has remained severely tied down right from its establishment in 2004, they added.
Despite officially being an independent agency, the commission has rather been used as a weapon by the successive governments against their opponents, they observed.
For the same reason, the agency could rarely take into account the corruption allegations brought against the powerful ones, particularly politicians, bureaucrats and businesspeople belonging to or associated with the ruling parties, the experts said.聽
Even the commission, in most cases, has failed to initiate an inquiry or file cases against powerful quarters without a go-ahead signal from the government, they said.
According to the White Paper on the State of Bangladesh Economy, the country lost $16 billion annually between 2009 and 2023 because of the illicit fund flow amid systemic tax evasion, misuse of exemptions, and poorly managed public finances under the authoritarian AL regime.聽
The white paper, submitted to chief adviser Muhammad Yunus on December 1, underscored the significant fiscal opportunities lost to corruption and stated that halving tax exemptions could double education funding and triple health allocations.聽
TIB executive director Iftekharuzzaman told 抖阴精品 on Sunday that the promises about zero tolerance against corruption remained only on paper.
鈥楾he corruption is on the rise, and it was also institutionalised in Bangladesh in the past through the tripartite collusion of bureaucracy, politics and business,鈥� he said.
鈥楾he tripartite collusion had created scope for abusing power, weakening the state structure as corruption, especially high-level corruption and money laundering, increased,鈥� he added.聽
The past government not only allowed corruption but also gave protection to the corruption, said Iftekharuzzaman.
鈥極ur young generation created scope of bringing change through mass uprising, so we have to utilise the scope with the spirit of the mass uprising to combat corruption.鈥�
A positive change is, however, a must in bureaucracy and politics to make an effective functional Anti-Corruption Commission to check corruption, he said.
According to a TIB survey titled Corruption in Service Sectors: National Household Survey 2023, people paid an estimated Tk 1.46 lakh crore in bribes to get services during the 15 years of AL rule.
The survey of 15,515 households revealed that 70.9 per cent of respondents encountered corruption while seeking services in 2023.
Between May 2023 and April 2024, service seekers paid about Tk 10,902 crore in bribes, which is 1.4 per cent of the revised national budget for the 2023-24 financial year and 0.2 per cent of the GDP, it says.
The survey also found that the Department of Immigration and Passports, the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority, and law enforcement agencies were the most corruption-prone sectors, respectively.
It said that 50.8 per cent of the surveyed households reported paying bribes or being forced to pay extra for services.
Former ACC director general Moyeedul Islam said, 鈥楾he ACC could not play a role as an independent body during AL tenure as the partisan governments held the agency hostage and controlled it.鈥�
He said, 鈥楢ll the political governments used the ACC as a weapon for harassing opposition people in the past, but the trend should change to fight corruption.鈥櫬�
He stressed the need for holding the corrupt people accountable to effectively combat corruption.
The commission should work effectively this time, as now a neutral government is in power, but top posts of the commission are lying vacant for more than one month, he expressed frustration.
The latest Transparency International report published in January also indicated that corruption was increasing in Bangladesh as the country slid two steps to the 10th position from the bottom among the 180 countries covered by its Corruption Perception Index 2023.
Bangladesh, which was in the 12th position in the same index in 2022, ranked 149th in 2023, down from 147th position in the previous year, while its points dropped to 24 points out of 100 in 2023 from 25 points in 2022.
Bangladesh is the 4th most corrupt country among 31 Asia-Pacific countries and second in South Asia, ahead of only Afghanistan, it said.
