How a nation’s economy was robbed dry by politicans

A ruined mural of Sheikh Hasina, the ousted prime minister of Bangladesh, in Dhaka on Nov 5,2024 The brand-new guv of Bangladesh’s main bank, Ahsan Mansur, computes that about UnitedStates$17 billion was taken from the nation’s monetary system by politicalleaders in the 15 years before the federalgovernment of Sheikh Hasina collapsed in August. (Photo: Elke Scholiers/ The New York Times) DHAKA – The brand-new guv of Bangladesh’s main bank, Ahsan Mansur, computes that about UnitedStates$17 billion was robbed from the nation’s monetary system by politicalleaders in the 15 years before the federalgovernment of Sheikh Hasina collapsed in August. Other financialexperts guess that the real worth robbed throughout Hasina’s guideline, before she left the nation, might surpass $30 billion. No one can state for sure. Using a web of monetary plans, Mansur stated, the criminals in the federalgovernment and at some of the nation’s greatest business pulled off what was efficiently the biggest bank break-in in the history of cash. And they did enormous damage to Bangladesh’s economy. “The greatest level of political authority recognized that the banks are the finest location to rob,” stated Mansur, an appointee of an interim federalgovernment in Bangladesh. For an inside task, that implied taking control of the main bank and the ownership of a clutch of personal banks and their boards of directors. The banks then provided billions of dollars in loans to business, some of them imaginary, that would neverever be paid back. Much of that cash was then moved out of the nation unlawfully. “Whole boards were pirated,” stated Mansur, an financialexpert who worked at the International Monetary Fund for 27 years. In that time, he neverever experienced “any nation where the greatest level of the federalgovernment, engineering with the aid of some jerks,” handled “the organized robbing of the banks.” In October, Mansur was in Washington to lobby the IMF and other global loanproviders for monetary assistance through the hard duration ahead. Like numerous members of the brand-new federalgovernment, led by Nobel Prize-winning economicexpert Muhammad Yunus, he is a skilled technocrat. Bangladesh, home to 170 million individuals, is still reeling from the cycle of revenge, consistingof mob violence, that came after a demonstration motion fell Hasina, who maltreated her critics and utilized the power of the state to crush the political opposition. The financial storm is mostlikely to intensify next year, Mansur reckons, before it clears. Hasina gotaway to India, her fate and fortune indeterminate. Bangladesh’s interim federalgovernment stated it would lookfor her extradition. One of her allies who left the nation, Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, a previous legislator in her celebration from the port city of Chittagong, is under examination by the interim federalgovernment for cash laundering, according to A.K.M. Ehsan, executive director of the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit, the main bank’s examination arm. Charges have not been submitted. Chowdhury informed Al Jazeera that he was the subject of a “witch hunt” versus members of the Hasina federalgovernment. Attempts to reach Chowdhury, as well as Hasina, were notsuccessful. Their celebration’s workplace in Dhaka, the capital, is empty. Multiple calls and messages to its spokespeople, there and abroad, went unanswered. The trainee motion that brought down Hasina began as a problem about the absence of tasks and financial fairness. Before security forces fired at protesters, killing hundreds, it had got momentum on the back of prevalent suffering. For 2 years, the nation hadactually been tipping into a full-blown monetary crisis.  An deal he might not refuse   It was a chaotic however normal day when Mohammad Abdul Mannan, handling director of Islami Bank of Bangladesh, then the nation’s mostsignificant monetary firm, set out to work on Jan. 5,2017 His driver wa
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