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One of Bangladesh’s richest businessmen has launched a legal bid as a Singaporean citizen to recover losses he claims were caused by the government in Dhaka freezing his assets and damaging his investments after the ouster of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The action by Mohammed Saiful Alam, founder and chairman of Bangladeshi industrial conglomerate S Alam, and his family could threaten the interim government’s efforts to recover billions of dollars it claims deported from the country under the previous regime.
In a notice of dispute letter to Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus and some of his closest advisers, Alam’s lawyers said that unless the two sides can resolve the dispute within six months, they will initiate international arbitration.
The lawyers are making the case on the basis of a bilateral file from 2004 investment treaty between Bangladesh and Singaporewhere the S Alam family is located.
The December 18 letter states that the family obtained permanent residency in Singapore in 2011 and citizenship between 2021 and 2023. It adds that they all renounced their Bangladeshi nationality in 2020.
The letter, sent by lawyers Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and seen by the Financial Times, claims the Alam family have had their bank accounts frozen, been banned from traveling and lost control of their businesses, while also research has been done by government agencies. about possible money laundering without official notification.
It says banks owned by S Alam have been banned from lending and their management teams have been changed, while deals they had made have been canceled by the government “arbitrarily and without due process”.
“The value of the investors’ investments has been destroyed in whole or in part by the acts and omissions of Bangladesh, its agencies and instrumentalities,” Quinn Emanuel’s letter said.
“These acts and omissions, which are still ongoing, have violated and continue to violate the rights of investors under (investment treaties) and the laws of Bangladesh, and give rise to the current dispute.”
The Bangladesh government did not respond to a request for comment on the letter.
Ahsan Mansur, who was appointed governor of the Central Bank of Bangladesh after the ouster of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina’s regime in Augusttold the FT in October that Saiful Alam, his associates and other groups had siphoned money out of the banking system after taking over leading banks with the help of members of a powerful military intelligence service.
Mansur, a former IMF official, claimed they used methods such as loans to the banks’ new shareholders and inflated import invoices as part of what he called the “largest, highest-level robbery of banks by international standards.”
The S Alam group, which has interests in sectors such as food, construction, clothing and banking, has said there is “no truth” in Mansur’s allegations.
A spokesperson for Bangladesh’s central bank said: “The issues are under investigation and the central bank refrains from commenting to improve the investigation results.”
Alam’s letter is an early indicator of the hurdles Bangladesh’s interim government faces in its efforts to achieve this recover money it says it was withdrawn from the banking system under Sheikh Hasina’s regime.
In addition, Tulip Siddiq, a British finance minister and Sheikh Hasina’s niece, was this week named in a Bangladesh Supreme Court corruption case in which she was accused family of embezzling $5 billion.
Siddiq has refused to comment publicly, but a British government spokesperson said she had denied “any involvement in the allegations”.
Additional reporting by Krishn Kaushik in New Delhi