7 bKash agents held over illegal remittance transfer

Police yesterday arrested seven agents of a mobile financial service (MFS) provider for allegedly receiving remittances from abroad via Hundi, an illegal cross-boundary financial transaction system.

The Criminal Investigation Department (CID) conducted a drive following a report of Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) and arrested seven bKash agents in different districts in the last one week, Molla Nazrul Islam, special superintendent of CID, told a press briefing at its headquarters in the capital's Malibagh.

The arrestees were Mannan, 30, Sangeet Kumar Paul, 45, Jaminul Huque, 38, Mojammel Molla, 33, Hossain Ali, 45, Didarul Huque, 31, and Abu Bakar Siddique.

In September, BFIU, the anti-money laundering wing of Bangladesh Bank, ordered bKash to suspend activities of 2,887 agents for breaching laws and sent account details of the agents to law enforcers for further probe and legal actions.

“Following investigation, CID came to know that some Hundi agents abroad receive money from Bangladeshi wage earners there and instruct some bKash agents in the country through internet messaging applications to cash in the same amount of money in local currency for the recipients here,” the police official said.

“Such illegal transactions were decreasing the flow of remittances,” he claimed.

He said the seven had been doing this for the last few years and transacted crores of taka.

Contacted, Shamsuddin Haider Dalim, head of corporate communications and public relations at bKash Ltd, said, “The investigation into the activities of suspected MFS agents has been conducted on the basis of information provided by bKash Ltd as part of its regular monitoring to identify suspected or unusual transactions.”