Govt's silence about capital market loss suspicious: AB Party

Amar Bangladesh Party, AB Party, held a media briefing on Monday afternoon at its central office raising alarm about the persistent decline in capital market for months and years. Billions of dollars have been taken out of the capital market every time Bangladesh Awami League comes to power, it was said at the briefing. It all started with the ruling regime coming to power in 1996 followed by another round in 2010. Between June and November 1996, millions of small investors became penniless just overnight. Similarly, the capital market faced crush in November 2010. Investigation reports correctly identified the alleged companies and palpable perpetrators. Yet, no real culprits were made accountable or brought to justice. The regime reappointed Prof. Shibly Rubaiyyat as the chairman of Bangladesh Security Exchange Commission despite his alleged money laundering and failing to calm the market down.

The briefing was conducted by Asaduzzaman Fuaad, a barrister-at-law and Joint Member Secretary of the AB Party where Prof. Dr. Abdul Wahab Minar, a retired army major and Joint Convenor of the AB Party, was also in attendance and chaired the session.

The briefing reminded the nation on how the progressive loot and plunder of our capital market continued for years through economic mismanagement and breach of regulatory regime. Between January and March 2024, over ten billion dollars of investors simply got disappeared. Faulty policies like ‘floor pricing’, nowhere ever practiced in the world but in Pakistan briefly in 2008, made the capital market even more unstable despite repeated criticism from experts.

The situation became so bad that over ten thousands BO accounts were closed in four days of last month, a sign of trauma suffered by 3.5 million small investors. One such small investor even killed his son recently before committing suicide. It happened many a times in the past. The ruling party rather prosecuted protesting investors than trying those alleged perpetrators.