BB Governor asks bankers: Strengthen investigation to check financial crimes

Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Salehuddin Ahmed Sunday called upon banks to strengthen their supervision, monitoring and investigation capacities to check financial crimes. He also called upon the regulatory and law-enforcing agencies to raise social awareness against financial crimes.

Dr Salehuddin was addressing the inaugural function of a workshop titled 'Financial Crimes' organised by Citibank, N.A. at the conference room of Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (MCCI).

"We've to understand that capital flight, smuggling, hundi, and loan default are mainly the results of illegal activities of concerned parties, misalignment of currency and supervisory shortcomings and weak corporate governance in the banking system," said the Governor. He said regulatory and supervisory regimes for banks and financial institutions are steadily being upgraded to the standards of international best practices to ensure soundness and solvency of individual institutions and intermediation efficiency of markets.

The central bank's initiatives are aimed at improvement of legal aspects, corporate governance, loan recovery, liberalisation of exchange and interest rates, corporatisation of NCBs, risk management and efficiency of the Bangladesh Bank, he added. Around 30 participants from the Bangladesh Bank, Chief Adviser's secretariat, Police, Army, Joint Task Force, Ministry of Commerce, Ministry of Law, National Board of Revenue, Board of Investment, Securities & Exchange Commission, US Embassy in Bangladesh, Dhaka and Chittagong Stock Exchanges attended the workshop. Citigroup managing director and country officer in Bangladesh Mamun Rashid, Director and Head of Financial Institutions Mahbubur Rahman, Anti-Money Laundering compliance officer Atiqur Rahman and country compliance officer Omar Faruqe conducted different sessions of the workshop.