‘We’re up against time to find stolen billions’

Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H Mansur has expressed worry that much of the money laundered abroad by political and business elites over the last one and a half decades could disappear if it was not found quickly enough.

"We know that time is of the essence. Erosion of the asset base is a possibility," the former IMF economist told Al Jazeera.

Days after the collapse of the Awami League government in August 2024 following the July uprising and the ouster of prime minister Sheikh Hasina, the newly-appointed central bank chief began a hunt for billions smuggled abroad by its political and business elites.

Bangladesh Bank has set up 11 specialist teams to trace the assets of 11 powerful families who are accused of laundering billions of dollars to the UK, UAE, US, Malaysia, and Singapore over the past decade.

The amount of money in question is staggering. Just one of the 11 families being investigated is suspected of moving $15 billion out of Bangladesh and in one case withdrawing nearly 90 percent of a single bank's deposits, leaving it on the brink of collapse, said the Al Jazeera report.

Mansur said the UK is his starting point. He is now in talks with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and London law firms in a bid to trace and seize approximately $25 billion laundered from Bangladesh.

"Many of these families have their assets… in London in particular, so we think we will find a lot of assets here," Mansur said.

"Our whole purpose is at least [to] create awareness that the UK is a favourite destination of stolen assets all over the world, and Bangladesh is one of those countries," he said.

A person of interest for Bangladesh is its former land minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury Javed. Earlier, the Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit (I-Unit) unravelled that he owns more than $500 million of real estate -- primarily in London and Dubai.

Last year, in an undercover operation the I-Unit revealed that Javed's family had purchased over 360 luxury apartments in the UK, most of which were in London.

The Anti-Corruption Commission in Bangladesh froze nearly 40 of his bank accounts and the court placed him under a travel ban, but the BB is seeking to freeze his overseas properties as soon as possible, in case they are sold off.

Javed claimed that he was the victim of a politically motivated "witch-hunt" against people associated with the previous regime and said that "his wealth was earned legitimately".

While the central bank is focused on freezing assets, Mansur also wants the authorities in the UK and elsewhere to investigate the lawyers, bankers and estate agents who helped move billions of dollars for the "oligarch families", said the report.

Estimating that it may take up to five years to regain control of the funds, Mansur said the progress has been slow as authorities grapple with the scale and complexity of the task.

However, he said that the UK government is helping.

He is considering to offer plea bargains to those who helped move money offshore in return for evidence against the kingpins, or even some form of amnesty scheme to bring the missing money back to Bangladesh, said the report.

Another key issue is that the complex task of tracking billions of dollars across multiple jurisdictions has been made harder following the change of government in the US.

A team of investigators from the US, who were due to start work in Bangladesh this year, was called off after President Donald Trump froze funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) in the early days of his new term.

"They were supposed to be in Dhaka in full force, but it had to be cancelled … a number of our experts … had been funded by USAID, but it was stopped," Mansur says.

"That's unfortunate for us, but that's the way it is."