Fazle Kabir, a former finance secretary who has been serving as the Sonali Bank chairman, was made the new governor of Bangladesh Bank yesterday.
The appointment came hours after Atiur Rahman resigned as the central bank governor amid criticisms surrounding the $101m cyber theft from the bank's foreign exchange reserve account.
Finance Minister AMA Muhith announced the appointment following a meeting with senior ministry officials yesterday afternoon.
Fazle Kabir will join his new office after returning from New York on March 18, the minister said.
However, there were no official words on who would serve the central bank as acting governor until Kabir’s return. Sources at Bangladesh Bank said there had been no written instruction on this regard as of the end of the working day.
Hours after appointing the new governor, Muhith also announced that two deputy governors of the central bank – Md Abul Quasem and Nazneen Sultana – have also been removed from office.
Quasem was in charge of the IT department back office and the accounting and budgeting department of Bangladesh Bank. His tenure as the deputy governor expired on July 6 last year, but the Banking Division reappointed him in August; his tenure was supposed to in July.
Nazneen, the first female deputy governor of the country, was in charge of the foreign exchange-related departments, IT and payment department of the bank. After the end of her first tenure as deputy governor, Finance Ministry appointed her again only last month; Nazneen’s second tenure was supposed to end this July.
On Monday, the ministry also appointed two new Bangladesh Bank directors: Jamaluddin Ahmed, general secretary of Bangladesh Economic Association, and Rushidan Islam Rahman, research director of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies.
Who is the new governor?
Fazle Kabir, a veteran bureaucrat of 34 years, passed his BA (Hons) and Master degrees in Economics from the University of Chittagong. He started his professional career in the Bangladesh Civil Service as an assistant traffic superintendent in the Bangladesh Railway back in 1980.
After joining the administrative services in 1983, Kabir served as deputy commissioner and district magistrate of Kishoreganj, as a joint secretary in the Education Ministry, the director general of the National Academy for Planning and Development, and the director general of the BCS Administration Academy.
He also served as a secretary of Railways Ministry before becoming the Finance Secretary in 2012.