The interim government is going to send teams to Dubai and other tax havens to identify Bangladeshis' ill-gotten assets abroad and bring the money back.

Finance Adviser Salehuddin Ahmed revealed the decision yesterday and said sending teams alone would not be enough. "We also need concrete evidence [against the money launderers]," he said.

"We have taken various steps to identify and repatriate laundered money. But to be very pragmatic, we may not be able to recover all the money," Salehuddin said.

"However, our objective is to send a message that this [money laundering] will not happen again," he said at the 9th edition of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards Bangladesh Grand Finale, organised Asked about by the Entrepreneurs' Organisation at the Hotel Renaissance Gulshan, Dhaka yesterday.

Asked about a timeframe to bring back the money, Salehuddin said it would be difficult to say how long the process would take.

Noting that the white paper on the state of the economy last month unearthed how money was laundered abroad during the Awami League regime of Sheikh Hasina, the adviser said, "Now we are trying first to identify the money launderers and the places where the money has been transferred."

The panel on the white paper assessed that an average of $16 billion was illicitly siphoned off from Bangladesh every year during the 15-year rule of Hasina.

As per the report, the laundered money was sent to or routed primarily through the UAE, the UK, Canada, the US, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and India, as well as a number of other tax havens.

Besides money laundering, Salehuddin also commented on a report recently published by a media outlet on the next budget.