Who will stop money laundering?
The allegation of money laundering is nothing new. However, the issue has come to the fore again following a report published in The Daily Star titled “S Alam's Aladdin's lamp”.
The report revealed information about the property owned by this business group abroad. According to the law of the country, it is illegal to invest abroad without approval. The maximum punishment for this offence is 12 years in prison and a fine twice the amount of money that has been laundered.
Many agencies working on money laundering at international level are regularly saying that a huge sum of money is being laundered from Bangladesh through various ways. Therefore, the question arises naturally as to who is going to stop money laundering. The government had given a chance in the 2022-23 fiscal to bring back the money from abroad. However, nobody took that chance.
The name of the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) comes up whenever the issue of liability to control money laundering surfaces. It is also known as the financial detective unit of Bangladesh. According to the law, this agency works as the coordinator in preventing money laundering. As an independent government agency, it plays a role in preventing money laundering and investments in terrorism. However, the BFIU is not a law enforcement agency. It has only the power to prepare financial investigative reports and send them to agencies like the Anti-corruption Commission (ACC), Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and other relevant agencies. It is the liability of these organisations to take action against people involved in money laundering. However, although these organisations take legal actions in case of other offences, they hardly take any action against money laundering.
Prothom Alo recently spoke to five officials of the ACC and the CID over the issue. They say it is not possible for them to investigate the allegations of money laundering alone without the help of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) and BFIU as they have limitations in terms of knowledge and technological infrastructure. The banks should take the necessary initiative in this regard as most of these illegal transactions are done through the banks, they added.
The officials of the ACC and the CID further say the BFIU is busy with the minor financial offences at the moment. As a result, the incidents of money laundering are rising, but no steps can be taken at the moment.
The banking transactions were supposed to be more transparent with the gradual increase of BFIU’s jurisdiction. However, in reality the power of this agency has shrunk gradually in case of investigating the allegations of money laundering against influential persons. The BFIU once was allowed to get information only from the banks and financial institutions. Now it is allowed to get information from 17 sectors.
An official affiliated with the inspection activities of the BFIU told Prothom Alo on condition of anonymity that, “The BFIU mainly acts as per the directives and advice of the government and state-owned agencies and the governors. The agency summons accounts of different persons or companies on their advice. We have no way to work outside this.”
However, all the banks regularly report to the BFIU in case of any suspicious transaction or any transaction of more than Tk 1 million. Similarly, organisations of 17 sectors regularly report to BFIU over financial transactions. The BFIU is not unaware of different media reports on illegal disbursement of money from shariah-based banks in the last one year. However, the BFIU hasn’t investigated any of these allegations as the owners of these banks are on good terms with the government and the central bank. Although the BFIU is an independent organisation, it is accountable to the governor of the Bangladesh Bank.
People relevant to the financial sectors say depositing money in the Swiss Bank, buying hotels and homes in Dubai, buying the ownership of starred hotels in Singapore and the so-called second home of Bangladeshis in Canada and Malaysia are hot topics now.
Involvement of chairmen of some banks and businesspersons in money laundering highly discussed in the banking arena. Despite that, the BFIU doesn’t seem to be interested in this.
When contacted, BFIY chief Masud Biswas told Prothom Alo, “We don’t have the legal scope to speak to the newspersons.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a former Bangladesh Bank governor said, “An integrated initiative of six relevant organisations in the financial sector is needed to stop money laundering. Otherwise, it is impossible to stop money laundering.”
*This report appeared on the print and online versions of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten in English by Ashish Basu