HC calls for lists of loan defaulters, money launderers

The High Court on Wednesday asked the Bangladesh Bank governor to collect from different banks the names and addresses of people who defaulted on loans of above Tk 1 crore in the past 20 years and to submit the list to the court.
The bench of Justice FRM Nazmul Ahasan and Justice KM Kamrul Kader also asked the central bank to submit a report on people who laundered money abroad in the past 20 years and steps taken to recover the laundered money.
The court said that an unstable situation was created in the banking sector and therefore, necessary steps needed to be taken to overcome this situation.
The court also asked the government and the central bank to explain in four weeks why they would not be ordered to form a commission in 30 days to probe scams and corruption relating to sanction of shady loans and remission of interest against bank loans in public and private banks in the past 20 years.
The respondents were also asked to explain the cause of their failure and inaction to stop irregularities, illegalities and corruption in sanctioning loans and remission of interest against bank loans and to recover the bank loan from the defaulters. 
The respondents include secretaries to the cabinet division and the Prime Minister’s Office, finance ministry, financial institutions division, law ministry, central bank governor, National Board of Revenue chairman and the Anti-Corruption Commission.
The bench passed the order after hearing a public interest litigation writ petition filed by Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh.
Petitioner’s lawyer Manzill Murshid argued that an alarming situation was prevailing in the banking sector in Bangladesh that $8,175 crore was siphoned out of Bangladesh in the past 11 years in 2005-15, according to a recent report of Washington-based Global Financial Integrity.
He argued that the number of loan-defaulters stood at Tk 2,68,351, as of last November 2018, who were liable for Tk 1,45,765 crores, according to a report of the Credit Information Bureau of the Bangladesh Bank.
The report said that the default loans stood at Tk 1,11,000 crore as of January 21, 2019.
Manzill argued that a Centre for Policy Dialogue research released on December 7 revealed that Tk 22,502 crore was plundered from Bangladesh’s banking sector through major scams, irregularities and heists in the past one decade.
He argued that the state-owned banks failed to make any recovery of their huge funds swindled through unprecedented loan scams in the past one decade that forced once profit-making BASIC Bank to go almost bankrupt and others state-owned banks like Sonali and Janata to struggle.
The recovery from embezzlement of Tk 3,547 crore by Hallmark Group in 2013 was zero following 60 abortive attempts to auction assets of the group in the past five years, according to Sonali Bank managing director Obayed Ullah Al Masud.
Besides the Hallmark scam, the local think-tank in the report included embezzlement of Tk 4,500 crore from BASIC Bank during the tenure of Sheikh Abdul Hye Bachchu as chairman of the bank in 2009-14, fraudulence by Crescent and AnonTex involving Tk 10,000 crore from Janata Bank and embezzlement and laundering of Tk 1,174 crore by Bismillah Group from Janata Bank.
Abdul Hye, however, was not named in any of the 56 cases the Anti-Corruption Commission filed in connection of the bank’s loan scam although a central bank investigation found his involvement in giving shady loans to fictitious borrowers.
The total amount of bad loans of Janata stood at Tk 17,304 as of December 2018, a threefold increase on Tk 5,818 as of December 2017.
Janata’s bad load skyrocketed as Tk 2,868.77 crore more added to its piles of defaulted loans in the past three months mainly due to the failure of two of its clients by Crescent and AnonTex to repay loans.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net