The ACC is chasing small people such as at banks and land offices. Big people have taken bank loans on fake projects without meeting loan requirements. Board of Directors of State owned banks comprised of powerful ruling party men had sanctioned such loans. But lower grades bank officials are facing criminal charges for signing loan letter or disbursing loans. Some recent events show massive loan irregularities are also taking place at quite a few private banks. The government is bailing out those banks like the recapitalization of State owned banks while responsible for embezzlement of depositors’ money are moving freely.
Media reports are galore how a single business house has borrowed over Tk 5,500 crore from a State owned bank and defaulting over the years. It asked for a second time rescheduling of the loan to mean that over time the money will be slowly adjusted as bad loan; not recoverable. We don’t know what happened to Sonali Bank board members who sanctioned over Tk 3,500 crore loans alone to Hallmark Group on pressure of an Adviser to the Prime Minister. There is no disclosure on recovery of the loan originally dating back from 2013.
Capital flight by big business groups through over-invoicing of import bills or stealing banks and moving out money using informal channel are big financial crimes and mother of all other crimes. Had there been handful of instances created by the ACC taking some of the big perpetrators to trial, it could at least set a message that crimes will not go unpunished. We hope ACC will be pro-active against big crimes.
The ACC is tasked to deal with big financial crimes; not opposition political leaders and workers as it appears now. In our view people will take politicians into account for their crimes and misuse of power in free election. The ACC should stick to its mandated role to fight big financial corruption at big places.
