THIS is unacceptable that whilst the government has so far failed to bring back home former NRB Global Bank managing director Proshanta Kumar Halder, who faces charges of the illicit capital flow of Tk 35 billion, from India, where he faces a case after his arrest at Ashoknagar in West Bengal on May 14, 2022, the Anti-Corruption Commission has made little progress in the trial and investigation in 51 cases that the commission filed against him and his associates. The commission, in fact, filed 52 cases and in one of the cases involving the illicit capital flow of Tk 800 million to Canada and illegal wealth of Tk 4.26 billion, a court in Dhaka in October 2023, sentenced PK Halder, in his absence, to 22 years of imprisonment. The punishment would come into force from the day of his extradition from India. The commission has so far submitted charge sheets in five other cases, but it still investigates the remaining 46 cases, with no noticeable progress. The commission had kept an eye on PK Halder and his associates since the commission鈥檚 drives against illegal casinos in Dhaka in 2019. But he managed to leave Bangladesh on October 23, 2019 after the commission had issued a travel ban on PK Halder the day before because the commission reached the notice to the immigration office 13 hours after it decided to issue the ban.
The commission pulled together a team of its deputy directors to take measures for PK Halder鈥檚 extradition after his arrest in India. Senior commission officials that time said that he would be brought back home quickly, but two years and a half have already passed by with almost no progress in extradition efforts and the investigation or trial. Bangladesh has an extradition treaty, signed in October 2013, put in place with India. The delay in efforts of Bangladesh authorities, as the executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh says, could make the extradition difficult as PK Halder is facing trial in India, noting that the commission that time had not worked with the earnestness required for the extradition. The High Court during a hearing later also blamed the commission for its failure that allowed PK Halder to flee Bangladesh. The organisation鈥檚 executive director also hopes that PK Halder could still be brought back home if the commission investigated the matter now and Bangladesh authorities officially began the process for extradition, but it would take time. A number of other people are reported by various government agencies, including the Financial Intelligence Unit, to have laundered a huge amount of money out of Bangladesh and to have escaped the legal dragnet mostly because of half-baked efforts of agencies. The white paper on the state of the Bangladesh economy, which a government committee institute on August 29 submitted on December 1, also spoke of illicit capital flow.
The government should, in such a situation, expedite the process of the extradition of PK Halder, along with all others who laundered money and fled, and try to repatriate the money laundered.