Over 100 Bangladeshi names, entities in Panama Papers

Nearly 103 individuals, entities and addresses with links to Bangladesh figure in the latest edition of Panama Papers and offshore leaks that reveals information about offshore companies in tax havens.
A random check of the database for Bangladesh displays about two offshore entities, 56 officers or individual links, three intermediaries and as many as 42 addresses within the country.
The papers were published early Tuesday by the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the organisation that also earlier published the first tranche of such papers.
‘There are legitimate uses for offshore companies and trusts. We do not intend to suggest or imply that any persons, companies or other entities included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database have broken the law or otherwise acted improperly. Many people and entities have the same or similar names,’ the consortium said.
The consortium revealed some names of Bangladeshis through the Panama Papers and offshore leaks, including Kafil HS Muyeed, Rudy Ben-Jamin, Md Yusuf Raihan Reza, Ishraq Ahmed, Novera Chowdhury, Farhad Gani Mohammed, Mehboob Chowdhury, Bilkis Fatima Jesmin, Md Abul Bashar, Zain Omar, Benzir Ahmed, Md Afzalur Rahman, Mullick Sudhir, Sarkar Jiban Kumar, Nizam M Selim, Mohammad Moksedul Islam, Md Motazzaroul Islam, Md Motazzaroul Islam, M Selimuzzaman, Md Afzalur Rahman, Syed Serajul Huq, FM Zubaidul Haque, Zafarullah Kazi, Mohammad Aminul Haque, Nazim Asadul Haque, Tarique Ekramul Haque, Capt MA Jaul, Kazi Raihan Zafar, Mohammad Shahed Masud, Salma Haque, Khawza Sahadat Ullah, Syeda Samina Mirza, and Dilip Kumar Modi.
New Age tried to contact the persons mentioned in the leaks. Awami League presidium member Kazi Zafarullah and Khwaja Shahadat Ullah, managing director of Cosmic Group, talked to New Age.
Kazi Zafarullah said his name and his other family members’ names were not in the Panama Papers.
‘The list of ICIJ is also baseless as it was an old list published five years ago and proved baseless at the time,’ he said adding that he had no involvement with offshore businesses.
Shahadat Ullah said that all the information revealed by Panama Papers and the ICIJ were inaccurate and baseless. ‘I have no involvement with money-laundering and any offshore companies,’ he said.
Transparency International Bangladesh expressed concern over the involvement of Bangladeshis in money-laundering and their names revealed in Panama Papers on the website of ICIJ.
TIB executive director Iftekharuzzaman in a statement said that it was the prime responsibility of the government to check money-laundering from Bangladesh and investment of it in companies abroad.
He said the government should take necessary steps to bring back the money siphoned off from Bangladesh through the Bangladesh Bank, Anti-Corruption Commission, National Board of Revenue and Attorney General’s Office.
The consortium that brought out last month the first edition of the ‘Panama Papers’, by way of secret offshore data sourced from a Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, said the information about a particular country could have ‘duplicates’.
ICIJ said it was releasing these additional details on names and addresses in ‘public interest’ and also to ‘find out who’s behind almost 320,000 offshore companies and trusts from the Panama Papers and the offshore leaks investigations.’
It said the new data that ICIJ is now making public represents a fraction of the Panama Papers, a trove of more than 11.5 million leaked files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, one of the world’s top creators of hard-to-trace companies, trusts and foundations.
‘ …. The leaked data covers nearly 40 years, from 1977 through the end of 2015,’ it said.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net