In the last 15 years of Sheikh Hasina's rule, an average of about 16 billion US dollars has been illegally smuggled out of Bangladesh every year. This information has emerged in the three-month investigation report of the committee formed to prepare the white paper. The head of the committee handed over this report to the chief advisor Professor Muhammad Yunus at his Tejgaon office on Sunday (December 1). Devapriya Bhattacharya.
At the time, the committee said that the picture of corruption, looting and financial manipulation of Sheikh Hasina's regime found in the report is appalling. Meanwhile, the chief advisor Professor Yunus thanked the committee for this groundbreaking work and said, 'It should be included in school-college-university textbooks and taught to students.'
Committee chief Debapriya Bhattacharya said that the committee worked independently without any interference from the government. “The problem is deeper than we thought,” he said. This 30-chapter, 400-page long white paper shows how crony capitalism gave rise to oligarchs, how they controlled policy-making.'
Committee member Mustafizur Rahman said that out of 29 projects, they examined seven major projects—each costing more than Tk 10,000 crore. A total of 87 billion dollars or 780 thousand crore rupees have been spent on 29 major projects.
The estimated initial cost of the seven projects examined was Rs.1,14,000 crore. The cost of the project was revised to Rs 1,95,000 crore by adding additional elements, overstating the cost of land and manipulating procurement.
He also suggested the initiation of legal proceedings to bring people involved in money laundering under the law. Another member of the committee, Professor AK Enamul Haque, said, 'In the last 15 years, more than 7 lakh crore rupees have been spent on Annual Development Program (ADP) and 40 percent of this money has been looted by bureaucrats.'
Committee member Mohammad Abu Yusuf said that during the previous regime, the amount of tax exemption was 6 percent of the country's total GDP. If it was reduced to half, education budget could be doubled and health budget could be tripled, he said.
Another member of the committee M. Tamim said, '$30 billion has been invested in power generation, and if 10 percent of the illegal transactions are caught, the amount will be at least $3 billion.'
The report is expected to be made public soon.
