The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) was silent on the Tk 92 thousand crore financial scam involving at least 24 institutions including Hallmark and Bismillah Group. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has decided to investigate the former head of the organization, Masud Biswas, on the charge of helping with bribes from those institutions. The decision was taken yesterday from the ACC head office at Segunbagicha in the capital. According to the ACC, it was decided to conduct an open inquiry against him after the preliminary investigation by the intelligence unit.
According to sources, BFIU is responsible for preventing money laundering. But on the contrary recently resigned BFIU chief Masood Biswas has been accused of accepting bribes in various ways apart from aiding in money laundering. Apart from this, he is accused of wasting money by pressurizing the banks through training programmes, organizing various unnecessary events and traveling abroad. In the past few years, the BFIU conducted an average of 8-10 major investigations per year and there were allegations of taking financial benefits from those institutions.
In favor of Dolly Construction, a customer of Rupali Bank, the concerned bank has given a financial benefit of Tk 400 crore by exceeding the single customer loan limit. Although the matter was caught in the investigation of BFIU, Masood Biswas did not take any action on the bribe. Apart from this, about Tk 1500 crore was disbursed from the four branches of the bank in favor of some institutions including National Bank’s customer Santana Enterprises without the approval of the head office. Masud Biswas arranged to exonerate the concerned officials of the bank by taking illegal benefits from the branch managers.
Apart from this, Saad-Musa Group, while verifying the irregularities of the loans received from several banks of about Tk 1000 crores, the negligence, corruption and irregularities of various banks were revealed, but he did not take any action regarding the illegal benefits in his official capacity.
Meanwhile, against the false debit instructions of Sajida Foundation, the customer of the bank laundered 82 thousand 416 dollars in 2021 by sending it to a customer of the Dutch owned ING Bank. Masud Biswas covered up the irregularity in return for illegal benefits from the bank. Masud Biswas illegally exerted influence to send a remittance of 100 million dollars in favor of Yamuna Bank’s Dhanmondi branch customer Shireen Spinning Mills and grant a bank guarantee of 1000 crore rupees in the name of NRBC Bank’s customer Tiger IT, a blacklisted company of the World Bank. Apart from this, the ACC has alleged that he accepted money from related institutions for a trip to Italy to cover up financial scams in Market Systems and Cash.
Source : Bangladesh Pratidin
