Another year of missed opportunities ends with hardly any specific progress to effectively prevent and control corruption, which continues to cause endless harm to the state and to our society. 

High-level pledges against corruption continued to be reiterated in 2022, as in the past several years. Soon after taking over, on January 2, the Chief Justice of Bangladesh compared corruption with cancer, and called for zero tolerance for it. Later, at a seminar on National Mourning Day, he stressed on resisting and rejecting corruption as a means to ensuring justice. And on Constitution Day, he reminded us that corruption adversely affects democracy, weakens the foundation of the state, antagonises the people and causes rage among them. 

This anti-corruption narrative from the highest echelon of justice not only echoed the prime minister's frequently reiterated commitment towards zero tolerance against corruption and of sparing no one (including those in her own party), but also represented the responsiveness of the judiciary to ever-growing public suffering and frustration as a result of deepening and widening corruption. 

On August 17, the PM, at a meeting with secretaries of the government, called for tough action against anyone involved. Echoing her, at a seminar on International Anti-Corruption Day, the president also called for exemplary punishment for the corrupt, irrespective of their political identity. 

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Salvage the banking sector, unmask the kingpins

Meanwhile, Bangladesh continued to be ranked poorly by nearly every credible governance- and corruption-related international indices, like those on WJP's Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality Indicator, Government Effectiveness, Political Stability, Voice and Accountability, Press Freedom, Political Rights, Civil Liberties, Corruption Control, Bribery Risk Matrix and the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). According to the latest CPI, in fact, Bangladesh scored only 26 out of 100, way below the global average of 43. We remained the second worst performer in South Asia after Afghanistan. 

Institutional ineffectiveness is among the main reasons for our failure to improve our performance in the aforementioned indices. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) continued to face challenges of trust and credibility on whether it can even-handedly deliver its core mandate of effectively controlling corruption beyond the small fries, and hold to account bigger fish. The ACC's credibility took on another negative dimension around the controversial dismissal of one of its investigation officers, whose annual performance assessment was consistently high-grade. It happened against the backdrop of his courageous investigation against some key syndicates of grand corruption in Chattogram and Cox's Bazar. It caused a large section of ACC staff to resort to unprecedented acts of protest for their rights, including job security. The incident also reinforced concerns about the ACC's seriousness of purpose, governance challenges, and organisational effectiveness.

Though hard to concretely measure, the cost of corruption in Bangladesh is staggeringly high, amounting to at least two to three percent of GDP, as informed by the then finance minister in 2015. Corruption, grand or petty, is also discriminatory and a major impediment to inclusive development. This was a key finding of the National Household Survey on Corruption released by Transparency International Bangladesh on August 31, 2022. Nearly 71 percent of the respondents of the survey experienced corruption, and 72.1 percent of victims had to pay bribes to access public services. 

The burden of bribery, in terms of proportion of annual income, is seven times higher on lower-income households compared to their higher-income peers. The rate of victimisation of corruption among rural households was significantly higher, at 46.5 percent, than the rate for those in urban areas at 36.6 percent. 

The discriminatory nature of corruption is further manifested in the victimisation of households headed by persons with disabilities, as 80.3 percent of such households were victims of corruption, compared to the national average of 70.6 percent. 

The year 2022 brought corruption's distributive injustices into sharper focus while also exposing corruption-induced macroeconomic fragility, especially in the banking and financial sectors, which have been pushed to the brink of collapse by a triangular trap of loan forgery, tax evasion, and money laundering. 

The massive embezzlement involving Islami Bank, together with several others, pointed to the mountain of dirty games of collusive fraud that has been allowed to become part of the bank loan culture. 

Hardly any of the kingpins of these scandals, who most often use fake and anonymous entities as their key enablers, have been brought to account. The beneficial owners – who own, control, and profit from such secretive companies and shadowy bank accounts – secure loans to never repay, but mainly to launder. Instead of being subjected to justice, beneficiaries of this dirty game have secured lobbying power for themselves to the extent of policy capture to extort even more concessions.

The year also saw unprecedented privileges granted to money launderers when the national budget for FY 2022-23 made a provision to "bring back" illicitly accumulated wealth and overseas income without any question. This was a self-defeating, immoral, discriminatory, unconstitutional, and corruption-conducive enticement, and an example of ridiculing the high profile pledges of zero tolerance against corruption. 

The amount of annual illicit outflow of money from Bangladesh, even by the most conservative estimate, is at least three times higher than the USD 4.5 billion of IMF loan that the government negotiated to be receivable in 42 months, which is not only repayable with interest but also compromises our policy autonomy. Ironically, it is well within the reach of the government to make such loans redundant if it had the political will and institutional capacity to even moderately prevent money laundering. 

The institutions authorised to control crime and repatriate stolen assets (by enforcing relevant laws and taking advantage of available avenues of international cooperation) have been evasive at best. Their energy appears to be invested more on disputing the reported data on money laundering and critics thereof. 

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The rise and fall of Islami Bank

The first official recognition of the massive problem of trade-based money laundering appeared when, at a media briefing on November 15, Bangladesh Bank (BB) officials disclosed that a special audit had detected illicit financial transfers out of the country through 20 to 200 percent misinvoicing by importers and exporters. Half a month later, the BB governor mentioned nearly a hundred such unnamed cases of misinvoicing in the month of July 2022 alone. 

It clearly took the central bank the unprecedented foreign exchange crisis (driven by the Covid pandemic) and the Ukraine war to wake up. Nothing is known, though, of any actions to be taken to prevent and control this long-nourished practice of invoice manipulation in import and export businesses to illegally transfer massive amounts of foreign currency abroad and evade taxes – a phenomenon which is neither unknown to relevant authorities nor takes place without the collusion of sections of relevant officials. 

Unlike well over 120 countries, including some of our neighbours, Bangladesh remains evasive about adopting the Common Reporting Standard (CRS) for automatic exchange of information on banking transactions, which could facilitate live tracking within and across borders. By adopting CRS we could have taken our starving revenue system and anti-money laundering efforts to a more effective level. 

Similarly, there appears to be no interest from authorities to ensure beneficial ownership transparency, which could be a powerful tool to salvage the banking sector from the brink of collapse. Will the government have the political courage to undertake such badly needed reforms, in a context where the policy regime continues to be possessed by beneficiaries and protectors of loan defaulting, tax evasion, and money laundering?

Dr Iftekharuzzaman is executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh.

The Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) has urged the government to publish the draft Bank Companies (Amendment) Act for the interest of the people.

"This is not a secret document, so it should be published," said the anti-graft organisation in a press release yesterday.

The cabinet approved the draft of the Act on March 28 in order to reform the banking sector.

When the draft got the nod from the cabinet nearly one month ago, it was expected that the government would publish it in order to receive feedbacks and recommendations from the stakeholders as a usual practice of the current government, the TIB said.

"But the document has not been published yet."

Quoting media reports, the press release said the TIB was astonished when it came to know that the banking division of the finance ministry declined to share the draft Act with a mission of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently, citing it as a classified document.

As per the reform actions agreed with the IMF for the $4.7 billion loan programme, the government is supposed to submit the draft to parliament by June.

In any logic, the draft Act, which is directly linked with the public interests, cannot be a classified document.

But there might be a question of whether the amendment has given priority to the interest of vested groups rather than protecting the interest of the public.

Confusion is being created over a document that is not classified and this is because the policies of the banking sector are dictated by loan defaulters and people involved with loan scams and capital flight, the TIB alleged.

So, the draft should be made public as soon as possible, it said.

The TIB said the draft should be finalised in a transparent manner by incorporating the feedbacks and recommendations of experts and stakeholders.

"Otherwise, the government's will to restore good governance in the banking sector will remain questionable."

Dr Iftekharuzzaman, executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB), talks about how corruption and a lack of good governance have crippled the country's healthcare services, and what needs to be done to overcome the challenges facing this sector, in an exclusive interview with Naznin Tithi of The Daily Star.

Recently, there have been allegations of irregularities in the recruitment process of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), specifically against its vice-chancellor. Although the health minister said the allegations would be looked into, we still do not know of any action being taken by the government. What could be the reason behind this?

Allegations of irregularities in the recruitment process of public bodies, such as general and specialised public universities, are nothing new. Barring a few exceptions, it has become almost a way of life. According to credible research and investigative reports, the main factor behind the wide prevalence of such irregularities is the lack of both preventive and corrective measures against partisan political influence, nepotism, favouritism, and various types of illicit payments – which have been allowed to be institutionalised violating the relevant rules.

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Not a place for corruption

The BSMMU corruption recently revealed by several evidence-based media reports represents the typical ball game of the recruitment business. It is disappointing that recruitment at such a premier institution, dedicated to advanced health education and medical services, is bedevilled by so many irregularities and a lack of accountability. But it is not surprising at all, because the rot is allegedly at the highest levels, which means they enjoy unlimited impunity due to partisan political connections. This not only accounts for inaction against various forms of abuse of power, but also indiscriminately compromises fundamentals of due process, accountability mechanisms, and institutional integrity.

Some recent incidents have also exposed the lack of accountability and ill practices prevailing in private healthcare facilities. The tragic death of a mother and her newborn (the latter in the capital's Central Hospital) is a case in point. How can we hold private healthcare facilities accountable?

Like any other public service delivery sector, health services are deeply troubled by corruption and lack of accountability. The sector has always been starved of resources due to one of the lowest rates of budgetary allocation by the global standards. More importantly, even the comparatively meagre resources are subjected to various forms of corruption, misappropriation and misuse, procurement fraud, extortion, and swindling. As the health sector was exposed to sharper spotlight after the onset of the Covid pandemic, the long-nourished anomalies in the sector were more graphically exposed, accompanied by evidence of how the pandemic became a blatant profit-making opportunity for some patronage-rich, vested quarters.

A frustrating picture of governance deficit and corruption was recently revealed by a study conducted by TIB on the Holy Family Red Crescent Hospital. The findings were particularly disappointing, given the hospital's glorious history as a service provider carrying the International Red Cross and Red Crescent brand, no less.

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A corruption crackdown in health sector is a need of the hour

Similar revelations have come to the fore through earlier TIB research conducted on both public and private health sectors. The private sector has agreeably filled a significant gap of health service facilities against a growing demand, which the public sector is justifiably unable to meet. Regrettably, due to a lack of specific legal and regulatory framework – and more so, in the absence of any strategically designed road map towards achieving health service excellence – the private health sector has witnessed mushrooming growth, with the almost-exclusive motive of making profits.

Professional expertise, experience, and excellence have been undermined to allow private health businesses to flourish on power drawn from money, fraudulence, and connections. The much-talked-about Regent Group's collusive fraud to extort public money in the name of providing health services during the Covid crisis, without meeting the minimum basic requirement of having a licence, is no isolated event. It is common knowledge that the overwhelming majority of private healthcare establishments do not meet the minimum level of professional skills, equipment, and facilities.

Again, there are definitely some exceptions. But the private health sector has been captured by unscrupulous hospitals, clinics, and diagnostic centres all over the country, creating a thriving business sector that is based on extortion, fraud, and various other illegalities, and non-compliance of whatever regulations or policies that exist. All these have rendered quality health service in Bangladesh a pipe dream. The Central Hospital story is just an example of a frustrating state of health rights and security.

The High Court recently observed that corruption has permeated every level of the health sector. It has also criticised the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for not playing its role.

This is not the first time that the High Court has made such observations about corruption and the role of ACC. The court's concerns over health sector corruption and its doubts about ACC's role provide a judicial validation for a prevailing trust deficit about whether the commission is effective in delivering its mandate, especially when the "big fish" are involved.

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Can a bureaucrat-reliant ACC really be independent?

To be sure, ACC has its own limitations. Those with power in political and governance spaces have not fully come to terms with the concept of an independent, specialised corruption control body. This is manifested by a history of legal amendments and administrative actions taken to curtail its powers. The ACC itself hasn't always shown the courage or capacity to exercise whatever legal and institutional capacity it has been endowed with, without fear or favour. Effective delivery of the ACC mandate, therefore, demands changes of mindset and actions within the commission and beyond.

TIB has been working for long to unearth the ill practices in our health sector and has also given some recommendations to change the situation. What happens after the TIB reports are published? What kind of reforms are needed to heal our health sector?

Indeed, TIB's work on health sector corruption, as for any other sector, is aimed at catalysing positive changes on legal, institutional, policy and practice levels through its research and knowledge-based engagement and advocacy with stakeholders (including government and other relevant authorities). Every report we publish is transformed into policy briefs containing specific recommendations for change, using which we reach out to the authorities and try to push for actions, which often result in fruition. I would not say that we have been able to control corruption as such, which is not our mandate anyway. But as a demand-side actor, we have in fact been able to contribute to build stronger potentials of the state to control corruption through numerous new or amended laws, policies, institutions, and strategies. Regrettably, the problem remains in enforcement and implementation. We bring the horse to water; whether it will drink or not depends on itself.

In our pursuit of a fair, anti-discriminatory Bangladesh, few values are as vital as press freedom. We are, therefore, concerned by the persistent intimidation, harassment, and insecurity experienced by journalists, which shows how the media landscape remains fraught with obstacles despite the political changeover. The alarm raised by Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) and the Editors' Council in this regard recently underscores the urgency of addressing these challenges, and the responsibility for this falls primarily on the interim government. This is not to detract from journalists' duty to uphold ethical standards, but a free press, by definition, comes without any restriction or condition, regardless of its outcomes.

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A moment for self-reflection

Unfortunately, journalists today still face physical attacks, threats, slander, and frivolous lawsuits. In their statements, both TIB and the Editors' Council also noted the escalating rhetoric and even threats of siege by certain quarters targeting certain media houses, including this daily. Such attempts to suppress the media or manipulate its coverage whenever it challenges powerful interests hark back to the abuses witnessed under the previous regime, whose actions over 14 years led to Bangladesh's position plummeting 42 notches on the World Press Freedom Index.

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A victory for free expression

The government, for its part, did take some positive steps aligned with its commitment to ensure media freedom. It has moved to repeal the much-criticised Cyber Security Act (formerly Digital Security Act), with plans to withdraw all cases filed under this law. It has undertaken measures to revitalise state media organisations and established a media commission to drive reforms in the sector.

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Government must make itself available to questions from the press

However, it is its failure—or lack of proactive role—to safeguard journalists from ongoing attacks and harassment that has raised concerns. Recent statements from top officials, including the information adviser, warning media outlets about coverage of banned or "fascist" organisations such as Awami League's student wing, Chhatra League, only deepen these worries. The abrupt revocation of accreditation cards for many journalists, reportedly for similar reasons, further contrasts with the government's commitment to press freedom.

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The indiscriminate arrests and murder charges

This approach, we must say, not only dismisses journalistic independence but also weaponises the media's duty to cover all sides of the political spectrum. It also risks robbing any media reform drive of its credibility. The government, thus, can be held accountable for both its actions and inactions. Against this backdrop, the priority is to end ongoing assaults on journalism and restore confidence in media independence. A "new Bangladesh" cannot thrive if its media remains shackled by fear and intimidation. The government must ensure robust protections for journalists and unequivocally condemn any attempts to silence or manipulate the press through coercive tactics.

Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) today termed the 12th parliamentary election as a one-sided one that was staged to appear competitive, and said it was an "ominous sign" for the country's democracy and the future of elections.

At a press conference in its office, TIB unveiled the primary findings of their study on the January 7 polls. They conducted the study in 50 out of 300 constituencies.

In this election, 100 percent of the Awami League candidates have violated the electoral code of conduct at least once, said TIB, an international anti-corruption institution.

Candidates of other parties as well as independent candidates were not far behind in this regard, it said.

Ninety-eight percent of the candidates spent more than the maximum expenditure limit of Tk 25 lakh in the election, found TIB.

TIB Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman said, "The one-sided election was successfully held as a strategy to stay in power. The legitimacy of the election may not be challenged, but this success will forever be questioned by the standards of political integrity, democracy and morality.

"The precondition for ensuring a free, participatory, neutral and equal field of competition were not fulfilled in the 12th parliamentary election," he said.

According to TIB research, candidates had spent an average of Tk 1,56,83,777 in the election, which is more than six times the expenditure limit.

The ruling Awami League won 223 out of 298 declared seats in the January 7 polls.