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Examining the current state of laundered money, black money, and rule of law in Bangladesh

The state is a symbol of sanctity. In these post-modern times, the responsibility of the state is to guarantee the defense of all those mechanisms which ensure its security through ensuring the security of citizens in the face of all forms of lawlessness and criminality. 

And the vehicle on which the state operates is the government. The government, in simple yet profound terms, is the engine on whose movement the business of the state is conducted. It is the instrument which identifies lawbreakers, hunts them down, and hauls them before the law to be dealt with in line with the call of justice.

We are part of the state of Bangladesh, we have a government which under the constitution is expected and empowered to speak of such values and to defend them. As law-abiding citizens, we envisage the rule of law to serve as the foundation of the state. We expect those who commit wrong to pay for their nefarious acts.

And therefore we do not agree with the nation’s finance minister when he proposes a 7% tax for those who have pilfered the country’s resources and smuggled them abroad, the tax measure being a means of informing these elements of criminal intent and behaviour that they can cough up that money and hand it over to the state and bring that laundered money home and return to respectability.

There is the unethical about this measure. Morality, a pattern of individual and social behaviour the state must promote and uphold, is laid low by such moves. It does not help the nation any when the finance minister informs us that once the laundered money is brought back home, it is the economy which will stand to gain. Why should we suppose that those who have siphoned off all that money, resources which belong to the people of the country, will bring it back and cheerfully place it in the coffers of the state? 

The larger question is of course this offer of a 7% tax. In a rules-based society, a violation of the law and playing truant with national resources calls for extensive and intensive pursuit of criminal elements. Those who have laundered money abroad should, in the fitness of things, feel the pressure of the state on their fugitive backs. 

The money we have observed being smuggled out to countries like Canada, Malaysia, and others requires the government of Bangladesh to connect with the governing powers in those countries, the objective being a recovery of the laundered money, a nabbing of the elements involved in the crime and their extradition, under police escort, back to Dhaka.

Well-meaning governments do not pander to men and women of questionable intent. And yet for far too long, it has been our collective experience watching just such pandering undermine the nature of the state. For years on end, black money has, within the ambit of national budgets, been transformed into white money. 

That act has been enough to persuade some people into believing that it is fine to earn wealth by questionable means because at some point, these elements will gain the privilege of seeing their ill-gotten wealth give them a place on the higher perches of society.

The point is simple: To offer amnesty to those who have smuggled money abroad is naïve, to expect them to take up the offer and return that money is an impossible dream. Robbers and robber barons do not return the money they steal. PK Halder and the likes of him did not purloin the resources of the state with the intention of someday handing it back to the country. 

There is this other point we need to get across to the finance minister and to the government. Money laundered out of a country ought not to come dressed in euphemisms. The minister would prefer to call that theft of resources as offshore money. 

Why are we getting things mixed up here? And why must citizens be told that nothing should be done that will prevent the money launderers from coming back home with all that money, place it in the hands of the government, and then settle back to enjoy life till the twilight comes to them?

Leadership is never a matter of appeasing wrongdoers. It is that high calling where ethics are held aloft, where citizens are reassured that those who break the law and take the state for a ride will pay the price for their sins in a court of law. 

Leadership is decisive action arrived at through a demonstration of pragmatism, through a clear understanding of the needs of citizens. Leaders do not rely on others to enlighten them on what they need to do to ensure people’s welfare. Leaders are those men and women who enlighten citizens with their wisdom, with their boldness of approach to national issues.

Wisdom has been absent in all these offers of tax-based amnesty to money launderers. It has been a missing factor in every move to transform black money into white money. Leadership is never a matter of compromise with those who malevolently undermine the nature of the state -- politically, economically, and socially. 

When the commerce minister complains that the traders who promised not to raise edible oil prices during Ramadan soon went back on their pledge, it should have been for the state to go full steam after these traders. Why were they let off the hook? Leadership does not complain. It acts.

A good leader, in any area of politics, is one who shapes his own strategy in the public interest. He does not plead with men to keep his request. He warns them that if his directives are not upheld, swift action will follow. 

We as a nation have a long way to go yet in raising the standard of politics. And as long as we do not apply the rule of law against elements who steal public money and stash it away abroad in banks or purchase homes in foreign land; against men and women whose lifestyles rest on resources immorally gained; against those who have been instrumental in share scams, we cannot inform the world that we are on our way to building a social order based on the rule of law.

Offering amnesty to money launderers makes a travesty of the rule of law, of the principles of morality. 

This republic ought to have higher, better, and nobler things to do for its citizens.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is a journalist and biographer.

This article was originally published on Dhaka Tribune.
Views in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect CGS policy.