The central bank is going to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Swiss National Bank (SNB) to investigate whether the money deposited by the local nationals in the ‘Swiss Banks’ was siphoned off.
The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), an anti-money laundering arm of Bangladesh Bank (BB) on Tuesday sent a letter to the Money-Laundering Reporting Office (MROS) of Switzerland in this regard.
General Manager of BFIU Debprasad Debnath sent the letter on behalf of the central bank.
Conforming that matter, BB spokesperson M Mahfuzur Rahman, told The New Nation that the concerned department of the central bank has sent the letter Tuesday requesting the SNB for signing the MoU.
As the SNB has been maintaining a confidential policy over disclosures of clients’ information, signing of the MoU is necessary to get information from the Switzerland’s central bank, he added.
“Once the MoU is signed it would help BB to investigate as to whether the money deposited by the Bangladeshis in the Swiss banks was siphoned off. Besides, under the deal Bangladesh would also be able bring back laundered money deposited to Switzerland’s Banks,” he added.
M Mahfuzur Rahman, who is also an executive director of BB, said, “Depositing money in any foreign country’s bank is not illegal if any Bangladeshi permanently resides or runs business there. “But, we will investigate as to whether and why any man living in Bangladesh has deposited money in the Swiss Banks,” he added.
When asked, the BB spokesperson said, the central bank has initiated the move as the volume of the money deposited in Swiss banks has increased significantly in the recent times.
SNB, the central bank of Switzerland, published a report recently saying the volume of money deposited in its banks by Bangladeshis has risen by 62 per cent in one year. The report titled Banks in Switzerland 2013 also said money deposited by Indians hiked by 45 percent.
The report says the volume of money deposited by Bangladeshis in Swiss banks by end of 2013 rose to around Tk 3,163. In the previous year, the amount was Tk 1,908 crore.
Various individuals and organisations of Bangladesh deposited the money in various Swiss Banks.
Sources, however, said, if any individual or organisation of Bangladesh has deposited money in Swiss banks hiding their real identity, it will not be possible to detect whether the amount was siphoned there or not.
Similarly, if Bangladesh has deposited any creative piece of work, gold and other valuable things in Swiss banks, the amount of those was not included in the statistics published by Swiss central bank.
The Swiss banks are hiding the money of the corrupt politicians, bureaucrats and tax evaders of Asia including the Europe and America since long. Now the amount of deposit in the Swiss Bank of Bangladeshi men is being increased.
