Depositors upset as scams still rampant in NBFIs

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REPORT in national daily on Saturday said deposits in non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) is sharply dropping as people have lost faith in such organization following several high profile cases of money laundering by senior management official of those organizations. The report has quoted ACC investigators as saying that big clients made deposits, mainly of illegal money in NBFIs amid slackened monitoring and now despite having lost huge fund they are not available to investigators probing such big money laundering to make statements. This is because they would not disclose the source of their huge unearned deposits. Moreover they have not taken legal recourse either.  
Here the ACC made one very serious point that needs to be checked and sealed. It said most NBFIs don’t check detailed information before receiving deposits from big clients like NID and TIN number. Unlike banks which collect such information to be sure of the sources of the funds NBFIs mostly ignore it while their eyes remained highly focus on collecting big deposits at higher interest. They shelter bad money in the process.
Some senior management officials of some NBFIs have taken advantage of depositors’ weakness and launder around Tk 10,200 crore. They fled the country and also have moved the money out of the country to Canada, Singapore and India. It’s almost a unique situation which has crippled many other depositors and ruined the non-bank financial sector.
One P K Halder, his relatives and directors of several NBFIs teamed up the laundering and ACC and Bangladesh Bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit are now probing the incidents and filed cases against them. ACC has rightly decided to seek intervention of Bangladesh Bank and Rural Development and Cooperative Division to make sure the strict enforcement of depositor’s information by NBFIs in case of taking any deposits from clients.
But the NBFIs are already facing the big setback reporting 5.33 percent or Tk 2428 crore capital withdrawal in one year till December last. Many NBFIs are now failing to return fund to ordinary depositors. We would like to say that both the banking and non-banking financial sector must make sure checking the source of any deposits, keep monitoring their loan portfolio operations. The stolen money must be recovered and perpetrators must be punished.
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