The illegal flow of finances away from our country has long been an issue that we have grappled with, it seems as if every year more and more money is being illegally siphoned off to other countries kept in the confines of offshore banks.
According to the Bangladesh Economic Association, even recovering less than 1% of laundered money could add Tk15,000 crore to the economy -- this alone is a particularly damning indictment of the state of affairs when it comes to illegal capital flight in Bangladesh.
While the government policy on corruption has always been zero-tolerance in nature, it has not stopped the total accumulated money laundering in Bangladesh in the last 50 years -- between the fiscal year 1972-73 to the fiscal year 2022-23 -- standing at Tk1,192,815cr. Bangladesh has legal provisions which are supposed to work against money laundering, but they have remained woefully inadequate.
Late last year, Bangladesh witnessed significant improvement in the Basel Anti-Money Laundering Index, which measures the risks of money laundering and terror financing of countries based on certain key indicators such as terror financing prevention and financial transparency. While that was certainly a positive development, it is clear that Bangladesh needs to go beyond reforming existing laws against illegal capital flight.
The nation is undergoing severe inflation which is widening our immense wealth gap even further. In the face of that, to allow the forces of corruption to siphon off capital is a moral failing -- one that the nation cannot afford to suffer from given our immediate economic ambitions.
The administration needs to crack down on illegal capital flight and work towards recovering every single penny of all the money laundered so far.