Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal today told the parliament that as of March this year, the amount of defaulted loans in the country was Tk 126,369 crore.
Apart from this, banks and financial institutions are not able to realise another Tk 21,046 crore due to stay orders of the high court, he added.
The minister said this while responding to a tabled question from ruling Awami League MP M Abdul Latif.
He said that the amount of defaulted loans of all banks and financial institutions of the country in the CIB database till March 2022 is Tk 1,26,389 crore.
Highlighting the steps taken by the government to identify defaulting customers and bring them under the law, the Finance Minister said that cases were being filed against loan defaulters.
The minister said that a defaulter of one bank cannot take a loan from another bank. Banks have been advised to use alternative dispute resolution methods to recover loans.
He also said that the Bank Company Act will be amended where intentional loan defaulters will face various types of restrictions.
Replying to a question from ruling party MP elected from Jamalpur Abul Kalam Azad, the finance minister said there was no specific information on money laundering from Bangladesh.
It is very difficult to determine the amount of money laundering, he said.
He mentioned that various development agencies and research institutes use different methods to estimate the amount of money laundered from Bangladesh and abroad. Even those institutions do not demand its appropriateness, he added.
The reports of these organisations contain conflicting information on the amount of money laundered from Bangladesh.
However, the minister said, regardless of the level or amount of money laundering from the country, the government is committed to stop the possible sources of smuggling as well as prevent money laundering and bring the smuggled money back to Bangladesh and all government agencies are working together to this end.
Mustafa Kamal also said the present government has been working hard to bring back the smuggled money since taking power. In the meantime, 20,41,534 Singaporean Dollars have been returned on November 20, 2012 which was smuggled to Singapore.
He said that legal action was being taken to recover the money from Bangladesh on the basis of specific information.
In this case, he mentioned Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) has been collecting information from foreign financial intelligence agencies about the smuggled or smuggled money and supplying it to various investigating agencies including the Anti-Corruption Commission, CID of Bangladesh Police and National Board of Revenue.
The Anti-Corruption Commission is currently investigating a number of cases involving the purchase of flats or houses or money laundering in other ways abroad (such as Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Australia, United Kingdom, United States and Canada).
In addition, Mustafa Kamal said, several cases related to trafficking filed by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Bangladesh Police are ongoing.
On the other hand, an inter-agency task force led by the attorney general is working to recover the smuggled money to bring the smuggled assets back to Bangladesh.
