A total of $234 billion was siphoned off from Bangladesh between 2009 and 2023, according to the white paper on the state of the economy.
As per the report, the laundered money was sent to or routed primarily through the UAE, the UK, Canada, the US, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and India as well as a number of tax havens.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star’s Google News channel. Chief Adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus hailed the report as a “historic document. “It will show us the economy we inherited after the July-August mass uprising,” he said in a short speech before receiving the white paper yesterday from Debapriya Bhattacharya, the chair of the committee.
Illicit financial outflows constituted a complex web of shadow economy that “thrived on criminal activities of diverse nature and drew sustenance from an unholy alliance of sections of corrupt politicians, businessmen, financial players, middlemen, government officials, influence peddlers and wheeler-dealers of different types”, the white paper said.
These people worked in connivance with and corrupted the country’s executive, legislative, financial, legal and other institutions; undermined domestic investment and revenue mobilisation efforts; depleted forex reserves; weakened the country’s macroeconomic management; and did serious damage to the cause of good governance in all spheres, it said.
“Our blood curdles to know how they plundered the economy. The sad part is they looted the economy openly. And most of us could not summon the courage to confront it,” Yunus said, adding that even the multilateral agencies that monitor Bangladesh’s economy were also largely silent when the plunder took place.
author=”Debapriya Bhattacharya, head of the white paper team” layout=”full_width””The problem is deeper than what we have thought. The white paper will show how crony capitalism gave birth to the
The laundered money was used to buy real estate or funnel the funds through business operations by remaining anonymous, said the 30-chapter and 400-page-long white paper.
A total of 532 people of Bangladeshi origin had real estate worth $375 million in Dubai and 972 residential properties worth about $315 million.
It has been estimated that $47-100 billion worth of money was washed or laundered into Canada as a haven to conceal harmful and illegal financial activities.
As of March, Bangladeshi-origin second home owners in Malaysia stood at upwards of 3,600, the report added.
The white paper committee voted for an independent prosecution body to create a proper mandate and to undertake follow-up actions.
Weak prosecution capacity and succumbing to political pressure have constrained the work of follow-up actions by the Anti-Corruption Commission, the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit, the Criminal Investigation Department and other institutions, it said.
The report suggested processes of asset recovery: conviction, tracing, case filling in external jurisdiction, freezing, confiscation and asset recovery.
It is not easy to establish the chain of connections involving ill-gotten money, money laundered from the country and the ultimate beneficiary in the destination country, which will be needed to ensure the return of the stolen assets to Bangladesh.
The interim government is taking steps to recover the money.
An asset recovery committee — led by the Bangladesh Bank governor — has been set up to recover the stolen money.
It has also decided to discard the provision that allowed the whitening of black money and enforce the provision of submission of wealth statements by government officials.
“All these steps are in the right direction,” the white paper said.
Money laundering from Bangladesh through illicit financial channels had thrived and flourished in an environment of political indulgence and patronage, institutionalised corruption, legal impunity and overall lack of good governance in economic management.
“Getting rid of this curse will call for an uncompromising political will to address the problem head-on.”
This will entail the restoration of accountability and good governance in economic management, enforcement of legal provisions, zero tolerance against corruption and corrupt practices, institutional strengthening and interagency coordination, it added.