Beneficiaries of Hasina govt's kleptocracy won't escape, will they?
Kamal Ahmed
Updated: 10 Oct 2024, 21: 17
Every day now the news media carries stories or some politician or former bureaucrat being arrested. According to Prothom Alo, in the first week of October (1-7 October) this year, a total of 7,018 persons were arrested from all around the country.
While it hasn't been possible to get the accurate number of arrests made in the two months since the autocrat Sheikh Hasina fled from the country, it is clear from certain deliberations that the arrests had been very limited before October. The main reason behind this was that the police system has broken down. Time was also required to repair the damaged police stations or to find alternatives.
There haven't been any detailed records available either of how many among the arrested are politicians, how many are civil servants, how many have been arrested for financial crimes and so on. At least no such details caught the eye in the news media till now.
It is also not clear as to whether the initiative to identify members of the law enforcement agencies who face serious criminal charges, has been completed or not. Towards the outset a few senior level police officials were arrested as well as a couple of senior army officers. But no one can say for sure if the other offenders within these forces will get away. According to official records, the number of police officers who have not returned to duty or who are in hiding, total nearly 200.
There were all sorts of offences and of varying degrees committed during the autocratic regime. The crimes committed from 15 July to 5 August are basically all acts of gruesome and brutal violence.
The indiscriminate killings, mass arrests and repression unleashed to bring the movement under control, stood out as different from the past 15 years of misrule. Many have termed these incidents as massacres and crimes against humanity, and these should be brought to trial accordingly.
The repression and torture carried out over the past 15 years may have been slightly different in nature, but much of the enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings can be considered as crimes against humanity.
The other crimes of violating human rights, repression and suppression must also be brought to justice. All victims have the right to justice.
It is only natural that politicians will bear liability for political decisions. It is vital that they be placed on trial and be held accountable for exerting unlawful pressure to cling onto political power by resorting to killings, assault and torture.
At the same time, it is also vital that those who assisted them in their misdeeds, who carried out their unlawful orders and carried out cruel and inhuman crimes, must also be held accountable. Those guilty of such offences are basically over-enthusiastic and partisan bureaucrats and members of the law enforcement.
The manner in which a few businessmen, aided and abetted by the government, managed to establish sole control over the country's economy, is a textbook case of kleptocracy in Bangladesh
The investigations into their crimes and the judicial process are unfortunately very slow and disappointing. Most of the officials who would display their power and who were notorious for their cruelty have vanished overnight. Some have even fled from the country, it is heard.
Much criticised at home and abroad for its ruthlessness over the past 15 years, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), which is also under US sanctions, now claims, "We were with the student-people's movement, we were with the uprising, and are doing all that is required to ensure its success." The RAB spokesperson claims they did not use any lethal weapons against the students and the people, and also that none of their members have absconded.
Once the UN's investigative teams report is available, the veracity of RAB's claims can be determined. But a helicopter bearing the name of RAB had been used for suppressing the agitation in an unprecedented manner, as is evident from videos on social media. The chief of army staff assured that investigations will be carried out and accountability ensured of the members of the armed forces who face allegations. We hope the outcome of these measures is made public.
The style of crime carried out by the group that assisted the autocratic rule the most and which benefitted the most too, was absolutely different. They are the financial felons. Some of these financial criminals have been nabbed because of their political identity. But the number arrested among those who have embezzled the country's resources and laundered the wealth overseas, is negligible.
Details of these financial crimes have been released by the government and the scope and extent of such crimes is beyond imagination. The manner in which a few businessmen, aided and abetted by the government, managed to establish sole control over the country's economy, is a textbook case of kleptocracy in Bangladesh.
Nowhere else in the world is there precedence of how a certain business family violated all rules and regulations and blatantly misused state power by using the defence forces' intelligence agency to take over one bank after the other, resorting to fraudulence to take loans of over Tk 900 billion (Tk 90,000 crore) from the clients' deposits in these banks.
Excelling in embezzlement, S Alam Group has a long list of financial crimes including tax evasion and money laundering. The proprietor of the group is not alone in these crimes. His family members are involved too as well as his paid employees. But there is nothing in the media as to whether they are in the country or, by virtue of their foreign citizenship, they have gone abroad.
In the meantime, in order to tackle the serious office of tax evasion, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) has ordered a moratorium on share transfers (buying, selling or gifting) of S Alam Group, Basundhara Group, Summit Group, Beximco Group, Orion Group, Nasa Group and Third Wave Technologies Limited (Nagad Limited). Bangladesh Bank has frozen the bank accounts of many of the directors of these groups as well as that of their family members. But it is quite possible that they had emptied out their bank accounts in the few weeks before these were frozen.
A bar on leaving the country has been imposed on many of these beneficiaries of financial crimes. But we are unable to understand the use of imposing a travel ban on a businessman-politician who owns hundreds of homes overseas and who safely left the country after the change in power, three weeks after he thumbed his nose at these restrictions on Al Jazeera television.
And the bureaucrats and bankers who ignored the law to aid and abet these financial crimes, remain out of reach. Just as in the banking sector, there was unrestricted larceny in the share market too. There too, the officials who were in regulatory roles were accessories in crime. They too seem to be out of reach.
Just as the students and people want accountability for the corruption of the political leaders and activists, they also want the beneficiaries of kleptocracy to face justice. But perhaps it is only natural for there to be apprehensions that due attention is not being paid to the investigations and judicial process pertaining to these looters.
* Kamal Ahmed is a senior journalist
Bangladesh Defense Forum
