Complications have arisen in collecting information on assets smuggled out of the country. Traffickers have invested in different countries using passports from multiple countries. Again, they are using the No Visa Requirement or NVR from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to enter the country smoothly with foreign passports. As a result, it has become difficult to get information about the amount of money smuggled into any country. In such circumstances, the stakeholders have recommended imposing strictness in the use of NVR. According to them, no matter the country of the world coming to Bangladesh using foreign passports, if visa is made mandatory without providing NVR, the information of the money laundered will be easily available. Bangladesh Bank sources said that this suggestion was made in a meeting of several intelligence agencies with the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU).
Sources related to Bangladesh Bank said that according to the report of Washington-based research institute Global Financial Integrity, about 18 lakh crore taka has been smuggled out of Bangladesh in a decade and a half. According to the calculations of 2021, the total amount of money collected by Bangladeshis in Swiss banks was 871.1 million Swiss francs (about 12 thousand crores in Bangladeshi currency at the current exchange rate). At the end of March this year, according to the Malaysian government, 3,604 Bangladeshis have bought property in the country with ‘second home’ benefits. Bangladesh ranks fourth in the list of beneficiary countries in Malaysia. Controversial business groups S Alam and Summit Group have been accused of money laundering in various countries around the world, including Singapore.
Although these news appeared in domestic and foreign media, the previous government did not take any steps to recover these resources. After dictator Sheikh Hasina resigned from the post of Prime Minister and fled the country in the face of anti-discrimination student movement on August 5, the interim government became active in recovering these funds. Multiple intelligence agencies including BFIU are monitoring the field. They have started communication with intelligence agencies of different countries including IMF, World Bank, US Central Intelligence Agency FBI. The complications encountered in collecting money laundering data from different countries while working at the field level came up in a recent BFIU meeting.
Sources related to Bangladesh Bank said that in August 2023, Singaporean authorities conducted the largest-scale operation against money launderers in the country’s history. This operation was carried out against money launderers from different countries of the world. It was reported in the international press that assets and cash equivalent to 100 million Singapore dollars were seized in this massive operation. Recently, after a more intensive investigative report was published in the country’s media about the purchase of S Alam Group’s property in Singapore, the country’s financial intelligence agency sought information about the group’s assets at home and abroad from the BFIU.
According to Bangladesh Bank sources, various complications have arisen during the disclosure of these information. It is known that those who were once citizens of the country, now hold foreign passports. For example, S Alam has accepted the citizenship of Singapore by submitting his Bangladeshi passport in 2022 – such news has been published. Many others use passports of more than one country. They are coming and going to the country using passports of different countries at different times with instructions from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they do not require a visa (NVR). As a result, there is no information about the passport of which country they are using. However, there have been allegations that these people have invested in Cyprus using Singapore passports after smuggling money out of the country. Someone has invested in different countries of the world including Dubai, Malaysia, Canada, Vietnam, Mauritius by smuggling the country’s money. The members of the financial intelligence agency are not getting accurate information about the country in which they have invested their smuggled money as they do not use Bangladeshi passports. Recently, such information has emerged in the coordination meeting of members of several intelligence agencies with BFIU. They advised the concerned authorities not to issue ‘visa-no-requirement’ clearance to Bangladeshis using passports of multiple countries to get accurate information about the smuggled assets.
On the other hand, there are many business entrepreneurs, who have taken huge sums of money from local banks and are no longer repaying them. In the past 15 years, with the support of Awami League and using the state machinery, they have taken loans of thousands of crores of taka and are not paying the bank money on various pretexts. In the changed situation they are now becoming debtors. It has been alleged that many of these loan defaulters are going abroad without paying the money to the bank. According to the relevant sources of Bangladesh Bank, the names of these defaulters are being added to the central data base. But when they pass through the airport, they cannot be stopped as the immigration authorities do not have a list of defaulters. In this way, many people have migrated from the country, but the law and order forces are not doing anything. Those concerned said that if the customer’s passport number is mentioned along with the loan information in the CIB, law enforcement agencies can easily identify the defaulters. A recent meeting with the BFIU among members of various intelligence agencies suggested this.