Editorial
Where has all the money gone?
Precious time being lost over siphoned off cash
While a discussion involving all major stakeholders on the merits and demerits of whether the finance ministry needs a banking division is undoubtedly a laudable initiative, little effort appears to be directed at tracking down the thousands of crores of Taka that have been swindled out of Sonali Bank. Precious time has been squandered on which institution, i.e. the Sonali Bank, the central bank or the government itself would lodge a criminal case against the Hall-Mark management. On top of that, the endless blame game on which authority or regulator is at fault becomes meaningless when confronted with the fact that most of the loan money taken by the group remains traceless.
Sonali Bank is a government bank and this is public money we are talking about. Taking a cue from the data presented in a seminar on November 5, it is now known that the amount disbursed to Hall-Mark is 320 per cent of the bank's paid up capital or to put it in another manner, 15 per cent of the finance requirement of the Padma Bridge; a colossal amount of money which needs to be tracked down and recovered. It has become imperative that authorities concentrate their attention on what the money has been used for how much of it repatriated to foreign destinations and what percentage converted into assets, both liquid and fixed. The investigation that is presently underway needs to focus on these matters and also on identifying the bigwigs who profited most from the scam. Identifying the big fish can provide vital clues that can open up the paper trail to the ultimate destinations where the money ended up.
It may be pointed out that when the first caretaker government was formed in 1990, President Shahabuddin engaged an internationally reputed firm to track down the billions of dollars that had been siphoned off over the preceding decade and to that end the investigation was successful. As time is of the essence, authorities need to explore all avenues of detection, even if that means engaging an international agency to find the missing millions.
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