Bangladesh has been deprived of around $7.8 billion (equivalent to Tk 75,000 crore) remittance last year as over 5,000 agents of different mobile financial services are using informal channels like hundi when migrants send their money home, CID estimated.
These organised gangs have been illegally paying the price in local currency without bringing the hard-earned foreign currency of the migrants.
Mohammad Ali Mia, chief of Criminal Investigation Department, said this at a press conference at its office in Dhaka after arresting 16 members of such gang from Dhaka and Chattogram.
The arrestees are: Akhter Hossain, Didarul Alam Suman, Khorshed Alam Emon, Rumon Kanti Das Joy, Rashed Manjur Firoz, Husainul Kabir, Zunaidul Haque, Adibur Rahamn, Asif Newaz, Forhad Hussain, Mahbbur Rahman Selim, Abdul Awal Sohag, Fazle Rabbi, Nabin Ullah and Shamima Akhter.
The CID chief said the agents of bKash, Nagad, Upay, and Rocket used to run a hundi, an illegal cross-border money transfer network, bypassing the legal banking channel.
Thus, the agents have laundered around Tk25,000 crore in the past four months, he said.
CID officials said these gangs work dividing into three groups.
The first group collects foreign exchange from the expatriates living abroad and give it to the agents of those who want to launder money from the country.
The second group paid the money to the MFS agents in the local currency.
The third group, the MFS agents, pay the price in domestic currency to the MFS numbers of the near ones of the migrants.
These gangs are constantly using MFS illegally to launder crores take, they said.
With the help of MFS agents, the smugglers are also conducting illegal businesses, including online gambling, drug trafficking, gold smuggling, yaba business, they said.
