Teams to be sent abroad to identify laundered assets: Finance adviser

The government is going to send teams to the United Arab Emirates and other countries to identify assets held abroad by Bangladeshi taxpayers and bring the money back to the country, Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed has said.

He came up with the information while speaking at the 9th edition of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Bangladesh grand finale, organised by the Entrepreneurs' Organisation at Hotel Renaissance in Dhaka's Gulshan on Sunday (19 January).

Salehuddin said, "Sending teams alone will not help. We also need concrete evidence [against the launderers].

"The ACC [Anti-Corruption Commission] and the NBR [National Board of Revenue] are actively working on money laundering cases."

The finance adviser also said that they had taken various steps to identify and repatriate laundered money. "But to be very pragmatic, they may not be able to recover all the money. Our objective is to give a message that this will not happen again in the future."

Replying to a question regarding the time for bringing back laundered money, Salehuddin said, "It will be difficult to give a timeline."

He further said, "White paper has given a figure. They get the information from somewhere. But definitely money has gone out of the country. Now we are trying first to identify the people and where money has been transferred."

Commenting on a recent budget report published by a media outlet, he said, "The size of the Annual Development Programme may be slightly smaller, but the overall budget will be large."

The programme was presented by United Commercial Bank. This year's winner of the Bangladesh chapter was Soumik Hasan Shranto, a student of BRAC University, for his business venture, Dubotech. 

He received prize money of Tk5 lakh and qualified to compete in the GSEA Global Quarter Final, which will take place in India's Nagpur.