Following deadly street protests that led to the dramatic flight of then-Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the country’s newly appointed banking chief launched a cat-and-mouse search for large sums of money that its political and business elites had smuggled abroad in August 2024, just days after the Awami League government in Bangladesh collapsed.
Over the past ten years, Bangladesh Bank has established 11 specialist teams to track the assets of 11 powerful families who have been accused of laundering billions of dollars into the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Malaysia, and Singapore.
The amounts involved are astounding. One of the 11 families being investigated is suspected of removing $ 15 billion worth of funds from Bangladesh, and in one instance, removing nearly 90% of a single bank’s deposits, causing the bank to close to collapse.
Former IMF economist Ahsan Mansur, who was appointed governor of Bangladesh Bank shortly after the government’s collapse, is concerned that a lot of the money could vanish if not quickly discovered. We are aware that time is of the essence. He tells Al Jazeera, “The asset base may collapse.”
His starting place is the UK. In an effort to track down and seize an estimated $25 billion in laundered from Bangladesh, Mansur is currently in discussions with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and London law firms.
We believe we will find a lot of assets here because many of these families already have their assets, particularly in London,” he says.
“Our whole goal is at least to make people aware that Bangladesh is one of the countries where stolen goods arrive, and the UK is a favorite destination for stolen goods everywhere in the world,” he says.
A “moral imperative”
Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, a former land minister, is one of the people of interest who, according to Al Jazeera’s Investigative Unit (I-Unit), owns more than $500 million in real estate, primarily in Dubai and London.
The Chowdhury’s family purchased more than 360 luxury apartments in the UK, most of which were in London, according to the I-Unit last year.
Nearly 40 of his bank accounts have been frozen and he has been subject to a travel ban, according to Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission, but the central bank is urgently attempting to freeze his overseas properties to prevent them from being allegedly sold.
Chowdhury asserts that his wealth was legitimately earned despite the fact that he is the target of a politically motivated “witch-hunt” against those connected to the previous government.
Mansur wants the authorities to look into the lawyers, bankers, and estate agents who assisted the “oligarch” families while Bangladesh Bank is focused on freezing assets.
“The law is being flouted, agents or operators, banks that are frequently working with the criminals to rehabilitate them in this country, which is not the only one. There are numerous more. I believe that taking a tougher stance against those things is morally required by the nation’s authorities.
Evidence amnesty?
Mansur says it could take five years for the authorities to recover laundered funds, admits progress has been slow because of the complexity and scale of the task, but claims the UK government is assisting.
He is now thinking about offering plea deals to those who helped to transfer money offshore in exchange for evidence against the kingpins, or even a form of amnesty to bring the stolen funds back to Bangladesh.
Another important point is that the challenging task of tracking billions of dollars across various jurisdictions has become more difficult as a result of the US’s transition of government.
After President Donald Trump frozen funding for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in the first few months of his new term, a team of US investigators who were scheduled to begin work in Bangladesh this year were called off.
Source: Aljazeera
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