When looting turns respectable

The news was so uplifting that one could almost picture an emergency meeting of the “Chor Samity”, “Dakat Association”, “People Looter Forum” and the esteemed “Bank Looters Welfare Council”. Tea was poured. Samosas arrived. A solemn resolution was passed.

If the biggest bank looters can repair their past, soften legal troubles and perhaps return through a lawful arrangement after paying back only a slice of the damage, surely smaller thieves of the republic deserve equal compassion. Why should petty criminals remain trapped in outdated ideas like punishment and consequences when large-scale looting now appears eligible for rehabilitation?

The poor victim remains where the poor victim always remains in Bangladesh: outside the room, inside the suffering and still expected to finance the solution.

To be fair, governments do not pass such laws for entertainment. The Bank Resolution Act 2026, especially Section 18A, has been reported as creating a path for former owners of distressed or merged banks to regain control under certain conditions. They may do so by paying 7.5 percent upfront of the public funds injected into the bank and repaying the rest within two years with 10 percent simple interest. Critics see a route back for those linked to the wrecking of banks. Supporters call it a practical way to recover at least part of what might otherwise be lost.

The reasoning is easy to imagine. Looters are hard to bring back. Stolen money is hard to trace. Court cases move slowly. Banks are weak, the economy gasping, and repeated recapitalisation with public money would deepen inflation and fiscal pressure. Perhaps some recovery is better than none. On paper, that sounds realistic. In practice, it teaches a dangerous lesson. If you loot on a large enough scale and survive long enough, the state may stop chasing you and start negotiating.

But the issue is bigger than a single section of a single law. I had written earlier that large-scale bank looting in Bangladesh rarely occurs as a solo act. No giant looter can inflict such damage without support, silence or cooperation from bank managing directors, compliant boards, parts of the central bank top brass, bureaucrats, political patrons and a legal culture that often punishes the weak faster than the guilty. The looter may be the face. The ecosystem keeps the back door open. I had warned earlier that successive governments have failed to dismantle the machinery that enabled such looting.

The government had another option. It could have chosen a tougher legal fight, pursued assets aggressively, gone after facilitators as well as front-end looters, permanently barred compromised sponsors from regaining control, and sent a clear message that banking is not a private picnic for politically connected adventurers. That would not only have punished offenders. It would have warned future predators that the state still has some spine.

The world offers little comfort for the softer route. There is no celebrated example of former bank wreckers being allowed to return, suddenly discovering honesty and leading a moral recovery. Serious banking reforms usually do the opposite. Failed owners and managers are removed. Shareholders absorb losses. Legal recovery is pursued. Those who break trust should not be first in line to reclaim it.

This brings us back to that imaginary meeting of the thief associations. Their demand sounded absurd. Under this new moral arithmetic, it is not absurd at all. When the savings of ordinary people and poor depositors are taken, recycled through failure and then handed back, directly or indirectly, to those accused of wrecking the banks, the joke is no longer in the opening paragraph. The joke is on the public. And the bill is theirs.

The writer is the founder of BuildCon Consultancies Ltd and BuildNation Ltd