Focus on money laundering

Understandably, on the basis of some preliminary taskforce findings, an inspection team of the central bank is looking into any abnormal transactions being sniffed about the suspected accounts. These are held mostly with the private banks, some 33 of the total number of 49 accounts on the surveillance list. It may not be without significance that the owners of the accounts are travel agents, commission agents and traders. The auditing process has advanced quite a bit too, in that the Bangladesh Bank having already confirmed the involvement of some of the account holders in money laundering, has referred the cases to the anti-corruption bureau.

It must not get lost on us that without some insider abetting money laundering could not happen. Hopefully, Bangladesh Bank keeps this in view as do the other banks.

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It is interesting to note that the Bangladesh Bank has sent four case studies of money laundering to all banks to alert them to the ways of clandestine operations and help them detect any abnormal transactions on bank accounts. Although this is good thinking, one would have thought the banks have their own mechanisms to do the job.

Flight of capital is usually understood in terms of over-invoicing of imports, but in our view, under-invoicing of export also means deprivation of earnings that could have been reflected on the national account. Besides, such ill-gotten money obviously falls in the category of unearned incomes or black money which might be susceptible to laundering.

In one major area of money laundering i.e. hundi, Bangladesh Bank has succeeded in curbing it to a certain extent. It is evidenced by the fact that the inflow of remittances from Bangladeshi wage earners overseas has shown a steady rise in spite of the difficult times.

It is expected that encouraged by such a success, Bangladesh Bank would be able to plumb new depths of money laundering and clandestine financial transactions that have acquired a global character, especially through the cyberspace. They are well-networked and deeply entrenched operations these days. In keeping with the challenge, Bangladesh Bank's surveillance, inspection and detection capacities will have to be increased and modernised. If we need a state-of-the-art technology, let's have it considering the fact that economic sabotage can be as pernicious as political sabotage.