Pledges to fight corruption

The pledge the interim government's adviser to the youth, sports, labour and employment ministry made the other day at an event organised by a consumer rights body saying that corrupt businesses would be brought to justice is no doubt reassuring. But corruption is something that is inherent in the social activity called business. Only when corruption crosses the threshold of acceptability, the common people react. That is exactly what happened during the past regime. What is worse, the businesses close to the upper echelons   of state power were given the carte blanche to do whatever they willed, even to loot. Some big business groups fell in this category of crony capitalists or oligarchs who literally bled the economy dry.

Under normal circumstances where there is some semblance of law and justice, executives or owners of big or small corporate companies involved in corruption and various types of financial crimes are held to account. But if those at the helm are law unto themselves and the corporate groups enjoy political patronage from the top, then that is the recipe for looting a nation by such crony capitalists or oligarchs. What Bangladesh witnessed for the last one and a half decades is a classic example of plundering the state exchequer jointly by the ruling party and big corporate groups under the tutelage of the government.   However, the August 5's political changeover seems to have put a stop to such despoiling of a nation of its riches by homegrown marauders.The young labour and employment adviser fresh out of the ranks of the students leadership that with the support of the masses put an end to the past regime, is obviously committed to the cause of a radical reform of society and governance including the crusade against corruption. Many bigwigs of the local corporate community engaged in large-scale corruption, defaulting on bank loans worth hundreds of billions of taka and committing the crime of money laundering have been arrested. Hopefully, they will finally face justice. The new governor of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), Ahsan H Mansur, upon assuming office came up with assurances that the plunderers of the banks, for instance, would be tracked down and held to account. Mention may be made here of such a corporate group named S Alam Group from Chattogram which got the blessing of the head of the pre-August 5 government so much so that it was able to exercise total control over seven private banks, namely, the Islami Bank Bangladesh, Social Islami Bank, First Security Islami Bank, Union Bank, Global Islami Bank and Bangladesh Commerce Bank through hostile takeover since 2017. The said business group robbed the depositors of Tk2.0 trillion worth of public fund throwing those banks into severe liquidity crisis. The then-governor of Bangladesh Bank came to the rescue of the plunderer of public money by printing fresh money to address liquidity crisis of the private banks. What a perfect instance of symbiosis between a person in charge of regulating banks and a bank robber! But this is just one example of plundering state's resources in cahoots with public servants. This was a case of outright looting of financial institutions by an oligarch enjoying political patronage. Default loan culture was yet another form of committing bank robbery. However, it cannot be said that the loan default culture was an invention of the immediate past government. In fact, it is generally accepted and tolerated as a kind of original sin in the banking sector, thanks to the advantage the moneyed and the powerful class always get from society, let alone from banks. But during the long tenure of the last government until it was dislodged from power, the age-old loan default culture did indeed have its heyday. The cronies of the then-political class among the big business houses could borrow from the state-owned banks unlimited amounts of money, but were not obliged to repay the loans thus obtained. According to the BB governor, the amount of default loans till December 2023 was over Tk1.45 trillion. The amount was more than Tk1.2 trillion in December 2022 and over Tk1.03 trillion in December 2021. The default loan figures clearly show how the size of the unpaid loans were increasing by leaps and bounds every passing year. One corporate house that championed the culture of default loan was the infamous Beximco Group owned by Salman F Rahman and his family. Mr Rahman was also the adviser for private industry and investment to the deposed former prime minister. As he is awaiting trial for the financial offences he committed following his arrest on August 13, questions have arisen as to what will happen to the employees, who number some 70,000, of the companies under the corporate group he owned. Since an equal number of families and their members depend on their earnings, it is important that those companies function as usual and the government extend necessary support to this end. So, the positive stand taken by the labour and employment adviser about the Beximco employees is commendable. However, the challenge the interim government is facing on the issue of tackling corruption is enormous. In the words of the chief adviser to the interim government Dr Muhammad Yunus, who, while describing the level of corruption the nation was immersed in during the past regime, once compared it to what he termed an 'an ocean of corruption'. But how to fight corruption, not in mere words but in action is the real challenge. There was never any instance of the past governments whether elected or otherwise, whose rallying cry was not about fighting corruption. But history provides ample examples of how those governments themselves wallowed in the muck of corruption in the end.

In that case, those vowing to fight corruption need to take lesson from the past before they promise big about ridding the nation of corruption.

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