We must professionalise our fight for stolen wealth

The claims are vast and visceral: billions spirited out of Bangladesh during Awami League's tenure through fraud, over-invoicing, and old-school graft. Some of that money has left footprints abroad. In June, for instance, British authorities froze a large portfolio of UK properties linked to a former AL minister, an unusually muscular signal that destination countries may be willing to cooperate when we show them strong cases. But asset recovery is not a morality play; it is a technical sport with exacting rules. If we want the money back, we must play by those rules.

Let's take a look at the legal playbook. Bangladesh's Money Laundering Prevention Act 2012 empowers investigators and special courts to trace and confiscate proceeds of crime; the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Act 2012 and its rules provide a channel to request evidence, freezing, and confiscation abroad; and the Extradition Act 1974 offers the framework to bring fugitives back. Internationally, we have a strong normative anchor: the UN Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) makes asset recovery a "fundamental principle" and sets out the methods—mutual legal assistance, freezing, confiscation, and return, including civil actions in foreign courts where necessary. In practice, Chapter V of the convention is where most cross-border cases are won or lost, and it rewards countries that can deliver clean evidence and credible court orders.

But we should be clear about the obstacles, too. The 2013 amendment to the ACC legal framework—requiring prior government permission to file cases against public servants—long crippled case velocity and sent the wrong signal to foreign judges scrutinising our requests. Section 32A, inserted in 2013, was struck down by High Court in January 2014, removing any pre-approval barrier to the ACC filing a case, but it has yet to be formally repealed. The ACC Reform Commission has also recommended repealing Section 32A. If you want other jurisdictions to freeze assets for you, you must show independence at the front end.

Read more

Singapore's role in recovering stolen assets is crucial

Second, beneficial ownership transparency at home remains fragmented. Bangladesh Bank now requires banks to collect ultimate beneficial owner (UBO) data, which helps domestic financial investigations, but we still lack a comprehensive, searchable national register covering companies and trusts across the economy. Without it, we are asking London, Dubai, or Singapore to do due diligence we have not done ourselves.

Third, we remain outside the OECD's Multilateral Convention on Mutual Administrative Assistance in Tax Matters, the backbone of modern automatic information exchange (CRS). Staying out deprives investigators of routine cross-border financial data and leaves us reliant on bespoke letters and goodwill. Acceding to the convention should be treated as an urgent macro-reform.

Moreover, our special courts remain overloaded. Packaging of mutual legal assistance requests (MLARs) is often weak on evidentiary schedules, translation, dual-criminality mapping, and chain-of-custody detail. The Asia/Pacific Group on Money Laundering's (APG) evaluators flagged this cycle of backlog and strain years ago; that shows up abroad as refusals, delays, or narrow orders. We must remember that asset recovery is like paperwork chess, where sloppy files lose positions.

Now, the international obstacles. Dual criminality still matters. A foreign court will ask whether the conduct you describe is criminal both there and here. Bank secrecy cannot be pleaded to deny MLA under UNCAC, but trusts and nominees still create fog—yes, even in the UK after its new overseas entities register—so you need to combine informal FIU-to-FIU intelligence with formal court tools. A realist's tip: build early freezing cases around simple, provable narratives (embezzlement counts, circular trade payments), then widen.

Which agencies matter abroad? In the UK, the National Crime Agency, Serious Fraud Office, and the IACCC hub can be decisive, and the UK's Unexplained Wealth Orders and civil recovery under POCA are tailor-made for suspect real estate. In the US, the Justice Department's Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Section (MLARS) still runs civil forfeiture of foreign kleptocracy proceeds—often the quickest way to immobilise assets sitting in Delaware LLCs or New York condos, for instance.

Read more

The path to recovering our stolen assets

Regionally, Interpol's Global Focal Point Network and the Asset Recovery Interagency Network for Asia Pacific (ARIN-AP) are the fastest bridges for "who do I call" problems. And never ignore StAR at the World Bank/UNODC and the Basel Institute's ICAR for case mentoring and legislative tuning.

So, what should Bangladesh do? Restore the ACC's operational independence by repealing the 2013 permission clause and insulating appointments and budgets. Establish a permanent Asset Recovery Taskforce, bringing together legal, economic, and forensic specialists. The taskforce should operate under a unified case preparation framework and include a centralised cell dedicated to drafting MLARs. Join the OECD tax cooperation convention and switch on CRS exchange relationships to end the "don't ask, don't tell" era of offshore accounts. Launch a genuine, economy-wide beneficial ownership register, with scope for verification and sanctions for false filings. Write and pass non-conviction-based forfeiture and illicit enrichment tools that meet due process standards; both are encouraged in UNCAC practice and widely used by peers. And professionalise, then over-resource, the boring bits—translations, forensic accounting, evidence matrices, etc—that foreign judges actually trust.

Tactically, go where the assets are and use the local playbook. In the UK, pair ROE searches with Land Registry data and seek interim freezing orders while preparing civil recovery. In the US, partner with MLARS for 18 U.S.C. §981 civil forfeiture when funds have passed through the US financial system. In the Gulf and Southeast Asia, lean on FIU channels (Bangladesh is an Egmont member) to get bank intelligence before you launch formal requests. File early, precisely, and narrowly, then iterate.

Money does not come home on press releases. It comes home case by case, with quiet diplomacy and implacable lawyering. The promising news is that partners are already moving: the UK freezes show that when we present credible assets-of-corruption stories, courts will listen; London's anti-corruption centre is designed for precisely this kind of grand corruption. Bangladesh Bank, for its part, is exploring a litigation funding model to finance complex foreign actions, a sensible move provided that governance and transparency are watertight. The government should lock in those partnerships and publish a quarterly scorecard of requests sent, orders obtained, and sums returned.

Finally, cut the hype surrounding money laundering and asset recovery. The public deserves candour: even well-run programmes take years, and some assets will be unrecoverable. But with a depoliticised ACC, modern transparency rules, serious international cooperation, and a taskforce that treats casework like an export industry, Bangladesh can turn a depressing saga into a rule-of-law dividend. Bring the money home, patiently and permanently.

Barrister Khan Khalid Adnan is advocate at the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, fellow at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and head of the chamber at Khan Saifur Rahman and Associates in Dhaka.

Views expressed in this article are the author's own.  

Follow The Daily Star Opinion on Facebook for the latest opinions, commentaries and analyses by experts and professionals. To contribute your article or letter to The Daily Star Opinion, see our guidelines for submission.