Malaysia asked to extradite 2 businessmen

The Bangladesh police has asked Malaysian authorities to arrest and extradite two businessmen as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations of money laundering, extortion and migrant trafficking against the duo.

The two businessmen are Aminul Islam, a Bangladesh-born Malaysian citizen, and Ruhul Amin Swapan, owner of a Bangladeshi recruiting agency named Catharsis International.

The Daily Star reviewed the letter sent by the National Central Bureau (NCB) of Interpol in Bangladesh to the Malaysia NCB on October 24.

It requested the Malaysian authorities to temporarily halt the operation of Foreign Workers Centralized Management System (FWCMS), a software provided to the Malaysian home ministry by Bestinet – an information technology organisation founded by Aminul.

The communication is part of an investigation in connection with a case filed on September 3 by Altaf Khan, a recruiting agent, who accused 103 individuals, including former expatriates' welfare minister Imran Ahmad and former senior secretary of the ministry Ahmed Munirus Saleheen, of their involvement in the embezzlement of Tk 4,200 crore and a human trafficking scheme.

The case also named former lawmaker from Feni-3 Nizam Uddin Hazari, Lt Gen (retd) Masud Uddin Chowdhury, and Kashmiri Kamal and Nafisa Kamal, the wife and daughter of former finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, along with at least 100 recruiting agency owners.

According to the case statement, the allegations stemmed from a 2021 Memorandum of Understanding between Bangladesh and Malaysia that selected only 101 Bangladeshi agencies out of 2,500 to recruit workers.

This alleged syndicate was accused of lobbying both governments to secure the agreement, which allowed them to charge workers exorbitant fees for employment in Malaysia.

The selected agencies reportedly charged Tk 4.5 to Tk 6 lakh per Malaysia-bound worker, while the expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry had set the official recruitment fee at Tk 79,000, according to the case statement.

Aminul and Ruhul are allegedly the masterminds that led the syndicate of the 101 recruiting agencies that managed the recruitment of over 450,000 Bangladeshi migrants in Malaysia between August 2022 and May 31 this year.

They joined some 500,000 others who were earlier recruited in Malaysia.

The letter by NCB Bangladesh said that Imran Ahmad and others have already been arrested and have provided important information. They confirmed that the FWCMS was used for human trafficking, money laundering and faking recruitment and medical documents.

It said that Aminul and Ruhul needed to be interrogated and requested the Malaysian police to arrest and deport both of them.

MIGRANTS IN DEBT

A study by US-based non-profit Verite, published in May, said 96 percent of the Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia reported facing risks of exploitation resulting from recruitment debt.

It said workers, on average, pay at least Tk 544,000 (US$5,000) as recruitment fees for a job in Malaysia. The amount is equal to three-year's pay for a casual labourer in Bangladesh.

Such a huge debt makes it extremely difficult for Bangladeshi workers to leave an exploitative employment situation, or to seek remedy from local authorities, the study said.

On March 28 this year, UN experts had written letters to Bangladesh and Malaysia saying that criminal networks operate in the recruitment process and deceive the workers into paying exorbitant recruitment fees which pushes them into debt.