A typical dumpster in the capital adequately depicts the disarray that characterises the investigation into the Basic Bank scam. Garbage is strewn all around the dumpster while the inside is mostly empty, if not squeaky clean. It's because the maids from adjacent houses are disinclined to exert themselves, and find it convenient to drop trash at the foot of the waste container instead of throwing into it. I call it the Lazy Maid Method, when a problem is addressed without going to its roots.

Sceptics also call it beating around the bush, which is now a functional practice at the Anti-Corruption Commission of Bangladesh. The investigation into the Basic Bank fraud is the latest example of that twist of irony. A former managing director, other officials and a host of borrowers of the bank have been indicted, but the big kahuna, a former chairman of this bank under whose watch the frauds allegedly happened, appears to have escaped the net. Not sure what the keen minds at ACC are thinking, but they're surely playing carom without the queen.

ACC may know the best, but it's not clear to the rest of us why the chairman isn't named in any of the charge sheets. Why exactly hasn't the corruption watchdog filed a case against him? For average minds it's hard to reconcile how a circle can be drawn if the centre is missing. 

Of course, the managing director is responsible when the bank was systematically defrauded under his negligent nose. The borrowers are also complicit as accused because they are holding the fairyland pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But how could the chairman not be guilty when loans after loans were supposedly issued at his behest? 

Last month, this newspaper reported how the chairman's brother used his influence and got illegitimate loans sanctioned to earn commissions. Follow the money is a catchphrase attributed to Deep Throat, who guided two American journalists to investigate the Watergate scandal that ousted a president from the White House. Why hasn't the ACC bothered to take that course? Why isn't it following the money trail?

It's possible the former managing director of the bank was involved in the scam. It's possible he too made hay while the sun shone. It's also possible, though not a valid excuse, that he was under pressure from vested quarters and complied simply because he was heady with the perks of his position and couldn't care less. 

Still none of these reasons suffice to convince us that he must have done it alone and that the board didn't have any knowledge of it. We aren't talking about one or two lendings or a few million taka here. An enormous amount of Tk. 450 billion was taken out through an organised corruption scheme, which must have involved hundreds of borrowings, huge paperwork and flurries of approvals from end to end. It's hard to believe the chairman and the board slept through this tsunami of theft and not once have they had a reason to doubt why so much money was leaving the bank!

The chairman and the board of a company have the fiduciary responsibility to protect its funds and assets. So, the ACC should ask each and every one of the board members of Basic Bank what he or she did when dubious loans were being dished out like hot meals in a soup kitchen. It should also ask the regulatory bodies what they were doing when a public company was getting cleaned out as if there was no tomorrow.

We don't know why ACC is missing these points. First of all, the chairman should be charged for the crime of doing nothing, if he did nothing, when the bank offered an open house and everybody had a field day. He should then be prosecuted if bad lendings happened on his recommendation or at his insistence. He should also be accused of failing to draw the attention of regulators to the heist that occurred before or during his tenure.

Guilty or not, the outcome won't clarify what happened inside Basic Bank until it also clarifies the role of the chairman. The investigation won't untangle the knot until it has first untangled the knot of the original sin. 

The ongoing investigation is comparable to driving a car without the dashboard. It's hard to tell how far it will go, leaving skid marks of doubts along the way whether the findings are eyewash and the convicted are scapegoats. For a ticket priced at Tk 450 billion, 160 million people are watching a dog and pony show. Failing to distinguish culprits from victims, they are already feeling cheated as their emotions shuffle between facts and fictions.   

The writer is the Editor of the weekly First News and an opinion writer for The Daily Star. 
Email: badrul151@yahoo.com