Anti-Corruption Drive and Class Discrepancies Are Antipodal Stuff

 

Solid and sustainable development cannot be acquired without eliminating class discrepancies, bribery and corruption. Bribery is also known as ‘hush money’ in some countries.

Former Finance Minister AMA Muhith once used a term “speed up money” in 2015 which indirectly hinted at bribes.

Money is one of the most essential things in life. But when money is used for purpose of corruption, it pollutes people’s morality, sickens social integrity and jeopardizes state mechanism. Corrupted officials take advantage of ordinary citizens’ modesty and diabolically they regard bribery as the daintiest treat to butter up their bureaucratic contrivances.

Political parties should all the time work for the betterment of the country’s masses but most of the politicians are not doing so. The biggest political parties of our country have been all along running after power instead of serving the nation.

Nepotism, political influence and lack of integrity posed grim threats to our economy from 2009 to 2024. Most of the loan defaulters and money launderers were powerful chaps during ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s term who had very intimate affiliations with the overthrown government. That’s why no actions were taken against financial culprits by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, her party people and even her family members.

Class variation is the biggest hurdle for socio-economic advancement. The common people of Bangladesh including workers and farmers cannot get hold of the blessings of development because most of the wealth of the country is clutched by a particular group of influential big shots who are always backed up by the bourgeois political parties who ruled Bangladesh from 1991 to 2024.

Some infrastructural projects of Bangladesh are much more expensive than other countries. It is not at all clear why so much money was being spent on these projects. Higher expenditure on development projects often leads to greater corruption.

Most of the state-owned and private banks have been affected with huge sums of defaulted loans. Financial sources have informed that most of the defaulted loans have been transferred abroad by money launderers. Money launderers often transfer money to overseas destinations by over-invoicing and under-invoicing.

Enormous figures of defaulted loans and mysterious loans have put a number of banks in capital deficit and liquidity crisis.

Most of the banks have failed to recover their defaulted loans. Financial experts have said that political influence, nepotism and lack of good governance are responsible for banking scams and financial turmoil in Bangladesh. Banking sources have stated that most of the loan scammers got bank loans through fake mortgages.

In recent times it has been exposed by concerned sources that a powerful group of money launderers make false shipment papers and fake invoices to facilitate illegal money transfer from Bangladesh to overseas destinations and also by hundi.

The existing state mechanism and the social system will have to be completely overhauled to put an end to bribery and corruption.


Nasir Uddin Shah is a
Senior Business Reporter
of The Asian Age.