$30 billion looted during Hasina’s tenure: NYT

The New York Times on Wednesday published a report titled 'How a country’s economy was siphoned dry', in which Bangladesh's central bank governor Ahsan H Mansur calculates that about $17 billion was siphoned out of the country’s financial system in the 15 years before the Sheikh Hasina-led government fell in August this year.

However, the true value looted during Hasina’s rule, before she left the country, might exceed $30 billion, the report said, citing other economists.

According to the report, Mansur said that the money was taken using a network of financial schemes. He explained that what the perpetrators in the government and at some of the country’s biggest companies committed was effectively the largest bank heist in the history of money and it inflicted incalculable damage to the country’s economy.

“The highest level of political authority realized that the banks are the best place to rob,” said Mansur.

Afterwards, the perpetrators took control of the central bank and the ownership of several private banks and their boards of directors. The banks subsequently lent billions of US dollars to companies, some of which were fictional, and much of that money was illegally taken out of the country, the report added.

Mansur, who worked at the International Monetary Fund for 27 years, said that while working for the IMF, he never witnessed “any country where the highest level of the government, with the help of some goons,” managed “the systematic robbing of the banks.”