UK freezes £185m of properties linked to former Bangladeshi minister

The UK’s National Crime Agency has frozen £185 million ($236 million) worth of properties linked to Bangladesh’s former land minister, as the country’s interim government seeks to recover the billions of dollars it claims were embezzled by the ousted Sheikh Hasina and her allies.

The NCA said on Thursday that it had frozen 342 properties with a combined purchase price of about £185 million after it was granted orders by the High Court in London on June 5.

“We can confirm that the NCA has secured freezing orders against a number of properties as part of an on-going civil investigation,” the agency said.

The properties are believed to be owned by or linked to Saifuzzaman Chowdhury, land minister of Bangladesh under Sheikh Hasina, agency and includes a high-end property in the St John’s Wood area of North London, according to the Financial Times.

“We can confirm that the NCA has secured freezing orders against a number of properties as part of an ongoing civil investigation,” the agency said on Thursday.

Freezing orders prevent a person from selling or disposing of an asset while an investigation is under way.

Bangladesh’s interim leader Mohammed Yunus is on his first official visit to the UK this week, where he reiterated his pledge to track down money he alleges was stolen by the former Sheikh Hasina government.

Mr Yunus, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his work on micro-financing, met with King Charles III on Thursday before receiving the King's Harmony Awards.

He also met the UK’s National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell on Wednesday, while his anti-corruption chief, Ahsan Mansur met the NCA.

Mr Yunus said on Wednesday that Bangladesh had a “historical” opportunity to “clean” its institutions and combat corruption.

The interim government accused Sheikh Hasina’s former regime of siphoning $234 billion between 2003 and 2019 in a white paper published late last year.

Mr Yunus said that so far overseas governments, including the European Union had been “extremely supportive” of the efforts.

“Bangladesh is just deep into corruption. Every system is corrupt. People are corrupt. So how to clean it up? What kind of changes do we have to make to make the government clean?” he said, speaking at foreign affairs think tank Chatham House.

“There is a formula, there is a policy, there is a way to do that.”

The government was preparing a “big package” of reforms dubbed the July Charter, which would be drafted by a government “consensus building commission” that seeks to find common ground among Bangladesh’s political parties.

“They’re responsibility is to … find out which recommendations all parties accept. That is a tough job for Bangladeshi politicians to agree on something,” he said.

He rejected suggestions that such a process was taking away the democratic element and trusting voters to pick the ideas. “Voters can watch the debate, it's on the newspaper every day. Our aim to get those recommendations, put it in a separate piece of paper. Then all the parties sign the paper,” he said.

Last month, Bangladesh reached a deal with the International Monetary Fund, in which Dhaka would get $1.3 billion in June after agreeing to key exchange rate reforms. IMF pressed for greater exchange rate flexibility, particularly the adoption of a crawling peg mechanism.

The country was pulling through its deep economic crisis thanks to remittances from migrants in the UK and Middle, Mr Yunus added.

The interim government had “huge bills to pay” which were currently being covered by deposits from Bangladeshis abroad who send money back home.

“We have to make payments for all those people who are knocking at the door with the big checks, big bills that we have to pay, otherwise we're going to the court, which is not good for us,” he said speaking at Chatham House on Wednesday during a 4 day official visit.

The banking system had “collapsed” and foreign reserves were “empty”, he added.

“The best thing that happened to us the overseas Bangladeshis, many of them are here in London, in England and so on and Middle East. They kept sending remittance, a huge amount of remittances, and that saved us,” he said.

“Remittances keep growing, keep growing, keep growing. Today, our balance of payment situation is completely changed,” he said.

Earlier this year, Labour MP Tulip Siddiq, resigned from her role as a Treasury minister charged with combatting corruption, after she was named in two Bangladeshi investigations into Sheikh Hasina's assets.

The former leader of Bangladesh is Ms Siddiq's aunt, though an investigation by the UK Prime Minister's Standards Adviser Sir Laurie Magnus found no “evidence of improprieties” on Ms Siddiq's part.