Why Dec? Resign now

An opposition lawmaker yesterday lambasted Finance Minister AMA Muhith for not tackling scams in the stock market and the banking sector and asked him to go on retirement now and not wait until December.

“It is what we are urging you to do,” Jatiya Party MP Ziauddin Ahmed Bablu said in the parliament. Muhith had earlier announced that he will go into retirement in December.

Bablu also came down heavily on Muhith for not taking action against those whose names came up in the Panama and Paradise papers and those who laundered money.

“Why will you let the haemorrhage continue until December? Why do you need to wait until December?”

The Paradise Papers are a set of 13.4 million confidential electronic documents related to offshore investments. The Panama Papers are a set of 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities.

Claiming that all of the leaked information was authentic, he said Nawaz Sharif had to resign from the post of prime minister of Pakistan following the revelations.

Bablu claimed that thousands of crores of taka was being laundered from the country.

The government and the finance minister did not take any steps against the capital flight though many names of Bangladeshis involved in money laundering came out, he added.

Stating that he had no idea why Muhith was scared of taking steps against the accused, Bablu urged the prime minister to do it instead.