THE Finance Ministry in a report to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry has said that money laundering has marked substantial rise in the country with the proliferation of bribery, corruption, forgery, black-marketing and smuggling, as reported by a local daily.
The report titled ‘The Money Laundering Problem in Bangladesh and Prevention’ was submitted to the Committee at its meeting on Wednesday. The Committee recommended that the Ministry and the central bank should identify the process of siphoning out huge money and take measures to stop it. The parliamentary watchdog also recommended strict implementation of the Money Laundering Prevention Act. The Committee also asked the central bank to find out ways to prevent the money laundering by Bangladeshis having dual citizenship.
Bangladesh Bank has been trying to identify the persons who have already sent money to Malaysia, Canada and the United Arab Emirates through hundi, an illegal way of money transfer bypassing banking system, but has failed because of non- cooperation by its counterparts in those countries. It said that the central bank has also failed to monitor the state-owned banks who lost taka several thousand crore in forgeries due to errant directors appointed on political consideration by the government. Sonali Bank Limited faced forgery cases of more than Tk 3,600 crore by Hall-Mark Group in 2012. BASIC Bank, another scam-hit government bank, distributed loans of more than Tk 5,000 crore violating rules. There is an apprehension that most of the money earned through banking forgeries, have been siphoned out through hundi, the report said. The report blamed the Anti-Corruption Commission for delayed investigation into money laundering cases.
It is highly unfortunate that the central banks of developed countries like Switzerland and Canada refuse to co-operate with Bangladesh Bank on flimsy grounds that they are protecting the interests of their consumers. However, the Swiss were most ready to co-operate with countries like the USA and shared data on Americans who held huge amounts of illegal wealth in the Swiss banks as the US threatened them with huge fines. Just because we are a poor developing nation with little in the way of international clout the central and private banks of these wealthy nations can get away with non-cooperation with our central bank.
Let us hope that the governments of developed countries -especially those countries which have a reputation as tax havens that they comply with the requests made by our central bank and provide information pertinent to investigations on money laundering. Most of this would stop if the people who earn illegal money knew that they could not safely store it outside the country. Similarly, the measures to prevent capital flight must be strengthened by Bangladesh Bank to ensure that our private banks play no part in helping money find ways out of the country.
