Another bank scam

TO a string of banking-related scams has been added yet another case of large scale fraudulence as divulged by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC). This time a swindler, has in collusion with bank staff defrauded five commercial banks of around Tk. 1255 crore.
This is again the same old story of cheating through bills against fake companies under the nose of bank officials who have infinite trust in the trickster passing for a businessman.
The deviant operator, owner of a towel-making company, drew the money from one nationalised and four private banks through a kind of loan called LTR in which the lending is done basically on trust. The Bangladesh Bank has pointed out how the bankers created the the opportunity for the fraudster to make off with public's money worth over Tk. 10 billion based mostly on papers which were fake and forged.
This is a case of how guardians of public money, the bank officials involved, have betrayed the public trust.
It is hardly surprising that the one and a half years' time that elapsed between the incidence of the scam and its disclosure has only helped the culprit to escape the law and transfer the money through illegal means to a third country.
We hope the law-enforcers, especially the ACC, would not waste any more time to use the instrument of Mutual Legal Assistance Request (MLAR) to track down the culprit now reportedly hiding in UAE, bring him back home and make him face the law. And law should also be applied unsparingly to those bank officials with whose connivance the crime was committed.