Britain to help Bangladesh fight corruption

DHAKA: Britain would help Bangladesh in its campaign against corruption with the UK's Department for International Development (DFID) and Scotland Yard assisting Dhaka's Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), reports said here on Monday.

"This (assistance) will be very useful when we want to know if anyone has amassed illegal wealth," ACC chief retired lieutenant general Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury said on Sunday while returning home from London after attending a conference on money laundering.

The DFID and the Scotland Yard detectives, he said, would provide information about Bangladeshis who siphoned off money and amassed wealth in the UK.

The ACC chief, however, said there would have to be bilateral agreements for bringing people back and the recovery of the assets from abroad. "It will take time to bring people back and recover assets," he added.

Millions of dollars were believed to be siphoned out by influential politicians and businessmen during successive regimes in the past one decade.

A report last month suggested that an amount of Taka 21,900 crore alone was siphoned out by now detained former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's elder son Tarique Rahman, awaiting trial on several graft charges.

The World Bank too had offered its assistance to recovery and repatriation of such money.

"Bangladeshi assets had been stolen or smuggled outside the country for the last several years while corruption had eaten up nearly three per cent of the country's growth rate," its vice president Praful C Patel said.

The interim government in emergency ruled Bangladesh spearheads a massive anti-graft campaign during which nearly 200 high profile politicians including former prime ministers, Sheikh Hasina of Awami League and her arch rival Khalida Zia of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) were arrested on graft charges.

The government earlier published two lists of influential corruption suspects while law adviser of the interim cabinet Mainul Hosein yesterday hinted that a third one was likely to be published soon mostly containing the names of "corrupt politicians".

"I guess the next list of corruption suspects would include mostly politicians and there is little possibility to find names of businessmen on it," Hosein told a news briefing.

But the New Age today reported that the Cabinet Division mapped out the action plan in line with the government's vow to pull corruption by its roots from the governance and address the common grievances of the masses against public servants at all levels and the bureaucracy as a whole.

All government offices under ministries, divisions and directorates have been ordered to implement the action plan to make the administration corruption-free, transparent, accountable and service-oriented, sources in the bureaucracy have told New Age.