Dhaka Plans Pacts with 12 Nations to Retrieve Black Money

Bangladesh is all set to unleash a war on black money.

UNB has learned that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government is preparing to enter into taxation agreements with as many as 12 countries to facilitate the sharing of information in order to bring back black money stashed abroad. 

These countries include Canada, the United States of America, Australia, Switzerland, Singapore, Hong Kong, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.

Sources suggest that Dhaka could sign bilateral or multilateral agreements with these countries to bring back ill-gotten money. And for this reason, the government has recently created a high-powered committee.

The head of the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) Abu Hena Mohammad Razee Hassan was appointed as head of the committee. Senior officials from the Anti-Corruption Commission, the National Revenue Board (NBR), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Customs Intelligence and Investigation were members of the Committee.

This committee, sources said, has prepared a report on recovering black money through various effective ways, including by reviewing individual tax evasion cases and formulating policies for facilitating exchange of information with foreign countries, including tax havens. 

And BFIU was the one that recommended signing pacts with 12 countries for the same.

According to sources from the Ministry of Finance, the working committee on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, chaired by Senior Secretary of the Financial Institutions Division M Asadul Islam, recently adopted BFIU 's recommendations at a recent online meeting.

In that meeting, the panel also decided to prepare a database to determine how much black money has been stashed in foreign banks, identify the hurdles to bring back the same and constitute a high-powered committee to prevent money laundering in the future, the sources said.

The annual conference of Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering was supposed to be held in Bangladesh this year, but it was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. The next meeting is slated for February 2021 in Malaysia. At that conference, Bangladesh, the sources said, would seek help from participating countries to bring back laundered money.

In its meeting, the working committee to prevent money laundering and terror financing also decided to urge foreign countries to initiate a process where they can seek information from Bangladeshi citizens about the source of money. This could turn out to be an effective step in curbing money laundering.

The panel also suggested increasing the capability and cooperation among the office of the Attorney General, the Finance Ministry, the Commerce Ministry, the Law Ministry, the Anti-Corruption Commission, the National Board of Revenue and Bangladesh Bank, the sources said.

Another suggestion that came up at the meeting was the introduction of economic intelligence in Dhaka's foreign missions. Anti-Corruption Commission personnel could be posted in such missions to gather information about black money illegally kept in banks of those foreign countries, the sources said.

The Committee also proposed that an asset recovery and tax recovery scheme should be in effect for tax elders and those with black money abroad. Members also called for strict adherence to the Bangladesh Bank guidelines on the containment of money laundering by over-invoicing of goods, services and shipments, multi-dimensional invoices for imports and exports, and false declarations for exported products and services.

Global Financial Integrity (GFI) reported in March that Bangladesh lost Tk 63,924 crore ($7.53 billion) a year between 2008 and 2017 to trade misinvoicing.

According to the annual report of the Swiss National Bank (SNB) for 2019, the deposit of money by Bangladeshi individuals and companies decreased by 2.38% to 603 million Swiss Francs (CHF) in 2019, from CHF 617 million in the previous year.

Source: UNB