Steps to be taken to bring back laundered money: finance adviser

The interim government will take steps to bring back the money siphoned off abroad, said Finance and Planning Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed today.

“It has some process. Information will be needed. For this, we will contact the agencies we need to contact,” he told journalists as he joined the finance ministry.

Replying to a question regarding the lack of good governance in the banking sector, he said many rules and norms of the Bangladesh Bank (BB) were not followed.

“Those who were supposed to enforce with rules did not enforce and those who were supposed to follow did not comply,” said Ahmed, who served as governor of the Bangladesh Bank between May 2005 and April 2009.

He said there had been a tendency to change the circulars repeatedly after issuance. “We would issue circular after detail consideration and remained stuck to that,” he said mentioning his tenure as governor.

Ahmed said restoring law and order situation, banking and port activities is the government’s priority now to accelerate the pace of the economy, which slowed since the middle of July due to violence, curfew and internet outage in the face of an uprising.

He said there are macroeconomic challenges and inflation is a major challenge.

“Majority of people were deprived of the benefit of development although the economy grew.”