A new Financial Times documentary claims that around $234 billion was illicitly moved out of Bangladesh during former prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule.
Titled Bangladesh’s Missing Billions, Stolen in Plain Sight, the film features interviews with protesters, politicians, business leaders, and experts, examining how the alleged capital flight occurred and whether recovery is possible. It opens by placing Hasina’s dramatic fall from power in context, with contributions from student leaders Rafia Rehnuma Hridi and Rezwan Ahmed Rifad, FT South Asia bureau chief John Reed, commodities correspondent Susannah Savage, Spotlight on Corruption’s Helen Taylor, and Westminster lobby reporter Rafe Uddin.
According to the documentary, funds were channelled abroad through over- and under-invoicing of trade, informal transfer systems such as hundi and hawala, and overseas property purchases particularly in the UK, which was described as a favoured destination due to its large financial sector and lucrative property market.
The film names members of Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rahana’s families including UK MP Tulip Siddiq as subjects of Bangladeshi corruption probes into alleged embezzlement from infrastructure projects. Former land minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury and S Alam Group chairman Mohammed Saiful Alam are also cited for their alleged roles in moving wealth overseas.
Reed recounts hearing accounts of bank directors being taken at gunpoint by intelligence officials and forced to sign over their shares to individuals close to the regime. The documentary portrays the alleged looting as systemic, with deep political and institutional complicity, and warns that recovering the stolen billions will be a long and complex process.
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