Three persons from Bangladesh and also some others facing the allegations of embezzling thousands of crores of Taka from different banks, financial institutions and capital markets are now living abroad in luxury after leaving the country without any obstacles. Needless to say, people in Bangladesh are almost one in expressing that these individuals should not be allowed to enjoy their looted wealth abroad. People’s expectation is that they will be brought back to Bangladesh to stand trial and that their looted monies will be recovered by the state to alleviate the grief and miseries of people who suffered in the hands of these nabobs of atrocious financial crimes.
State agencies are particularly investigating the alleged irregularities and loan forgeries committed by these three individuals. These high-profile individuals are Abdul Hye Bachchu, Abdul Aziz and Prasanta Kumar Halder (PK Haldar).
Abdul Hye Bachchu alone left BASIC Bank almost collapsed. He is now living in London and New York with family. Sources said he visits Bangladesh when needed. Abdul Aziz, the owner of Jaaz Multimedia, left the country allegedly after taking a huge volume of loans from several banks. PK Haldar allegedly plundered Tk 3,500 million from the country’s capital market and at least four non-bank financial institutions.
PK Haldar is now living in Montreal, Canada after leaving Bangladesh at the beginning of January this year. Sources said Haldar floated several companies in Montreal and Toronto after laundering money from Bangladesh. His brother and wife have been made directors of these business firms. Apart from Canada, PK Halder has huge investments out of ill gotten wealth in India, Malaysia and Singapore, sources added.
Abdul Aziz is also living in Canada. Abdul Aziz left the country after non-repayment of bank loans by his company Crescent Group. Five companies-Crescent Leather Products, Crescent Tanneries, Lexco Ltd, Rupali Composite Leatherwear and Remax Footwear are owned by Abdul Aziz and his brother Abdul Kader. They owe Tk 3,443 crore (as of October last year) to Janata Bank alone.
Earlier, the ACC imposed travel ban on Haldar and Aziz as part of its investigation into their alleged involvement in money laundering and accumulation of wealth illegally. “The ACC usually sends letter to the Special Branch of Police seeking travel ban on such people to prevent them from fleeing the country. But how they could escape dodging the airport immigration remains a big question. The cases of Haldar and Aziz are similar. Like them, many of the loan scammers left the country in the past to evade prosecution,” said an ACC official.
” The loan scammers who have been banned from travelling abroad could not be barred from leaving the country, the luxury life of the ‘ financial robbers’ is encouraging other scammers, ” banking sector insiders said.
Former chairman of the Association of Bankers Bangladesh (ABB), Anis A. Khan, said “The culture of fleeing abroad with money from the banks must be stopped. The robbers need to have their passports cancelled. At the same time, action must be taken against them by the countries where these criminals reside. ” If it is possible to cancel their visas, then the culture of escape from the country will stop forever. The Ministry of Finance, Bangladesh Bank, Security Exchange Commission, National Revenue Board and Anti-Corruption Commission should take joint initiatives in this regard,” he added.
“Many businessmen, influential people, loan defaulters and corrupt bankers fled the country committing big financial crimes. They took away thousands of crores of public money from banks and financial institutions. The state authorities appeared too weak to put high profile offenders in the dock,” said Dr Khandaker Ibrahim Khaled, a former Deputy Governor of Bangladesh Bank. He cited that their escape hampers investigation in relevant cases, wastes precious time of courts and undermines the rule of law in Bangladesh.
Dr Ibrahim Khaled further said the government should introduce legal measures to facilitate confiscation of assets of the financial offenders who fled to foreign countries to escape the law of the land. He said the ACC must arrest the top-level offenders who have mishandled general people’s money. “These actions by ACC will play an extremely important role in fighting corruption.
There is hardly disagreement among most quarters in Bangladesh about the merit side of the move to bring back huge resources pumped out of Bangladesh by the truly corrupt and powerful ones under different governments. The Finance Minister on occasion, in response to queries from the media, commented that steps would be taken to bring back the siphoned off wealth. But the finance minister’s comments need to be matched by vigorous activism to raise hopes that justice would indeed be finally done to bring back these resources which should belong to the people and spent or utilized for their well being.
Foreign agencies helping the government in these matters say that resources not in millions of dollars but billions would be recoverable if only successive governments in Bangladesh remained steady in pressing for the same. The recovered money could prove to be a booster for the country’s foreign currency reserve, help significantly the import operations and come as a powerful aid to support activities towards poverty alleviation and meeting requirements for spending on distressed people during emergencies.
When some 30 per cent or more people of the country remain in the ranks of the poor or very poor, when they fail to meet minimum calorie requirements for themselves even after every day’s hard toil, in this backdrop righteous indignation cannot but be created from such knowledge about a small number of plunderers who are using this country as a springboard to pump out such vast unearned wealth out of it to be able to enjoy the same in foreign countries. Indeed, the blood of any upright individual should come to a boil in anger from such information.
Thus, it is imperative that the present government should look at this issue with the seriousness it deserves. People in general are very aware of the looting of this land by interest groups at their expense. Thus, the incumbents in power must be seen as doing what must be done in the interest of the people by making all out efforts to get back the vast wealth of the country siphoned off by a number of plunderers.
In the remaining part of its tenure, the present government would be doing countrymen a great service by accelerating the moves to bring back the stolen resources of the people in bigger amounts and at short intervals. Apart from the obvious usefulness of the same for the public exchequer such developments will help to improve the credibility of the present ruling party in future national polls.
