Undisclosed money found in Bangladeshi VIPs’ accounts

DHAKA: Authorities in emergency-ruled Bangladesh said on Monday they have found “huge” amounts of undisclosed money in the bank accounts of dozens of prominent figures caught up in a major anti-graft drive.

Officials also promised to extend their crackdown on corruption to tax dodgers, firming up their pledge to clean up the South Asian nation’s politics before reinstating democracy and holding credible elections.

Badiur Rahman, chairman of the caretaker government’s Revenue Board, did not give a definitive figure on the illicit cash discoveries, but the leading New Age daily put the figure at more than 22 billion taka (318 million dollars).

“Our tax intelligence officials have found huge amounts of undisclosed money in 53 accounts,” Rahman said.

The accounts included those of 50 politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen named last month on an Anti-Corruption Commission list of graft suspects.

Hundreds more people are also being investigated.

Some of those named had property confiscated after they failed to meet the commission’s deadline to supply details of their financial affairs and account for their wealth.

The corruption crackdown by Bangladesh’s military-backed interim government has so far led to the detention of at least 45 high-profile figures, including former ministers.

Those now in custody include Tareque Rahman, son of former prime minister Khaleda Zia, who figures on a second list of 50 graft suspects compiled by the security forces but which has not been made public.

The Revenue Board said tax evaders would also be hunted as of March 27.

“Our teams will go to these potential taxpayers and would include them in the tax net if it is found that their incomes fall in the tax-paying category,” Rahman said.

“A huge number of people and business establishments do not pay taxes to the government. We want to expand the tax net by including these people. And we want to do it as humbly as we can,” he said.

A senior Revenue Board officer told that thousands of businessmen were now scrambling to be included in the tax net after the imposition of the emergency in January.

Business in Bangladesh has been booming since the 1990s but Rahman said only 900,000 people pay taxes to the government, contributing to the country’s low tax-GDP ratio of less than ten per cent.

Multilateral agencies such as World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have said the country needs to increase its tax-GDP ratio substantially if it wants to boost spending on infrastructure and poverty alleviation programmes.

Bangladesh has set a revenue collection target of 410.55 billion taka (5.95 billion dollars) for the financial year ending June 30, but is falling short of the target.

Last month, the interim government cut its annual development spending for the current fiscal year by more than 15 per cent to 220 billion taka because of poor revenue collection.

Bangladesh’s interim government took power on January 12, one day after president Iajuddin Ahmed quit as the head of a caretaker administration, cancelled scheduled elections and imposed emergency rule following months of political turmoil.—AFP