DHAKA: Every year, an average $16 billion was illicitly siphoned off from Bangladesh during Sheikh Hasina‘s “corrupt autocracy,” leaving the country in a state of plunder when she fled after a popular mass uprising, a white paper on the state of the economy during her rule claimed Sunday.
The committee on “White Paper on the State of the Bangladesh Economy” submitted its report, “Dissection of a Development Narrative”, to chief adviser Muhammad Yunus, saying it was “horrified” by the level of corruption, plunder, and statistical manipulation done by Hasina govt. The panel was headed by economist Debapriya Bhattacharya.
Yunus said the report should be published once it is finalised and be a part of national college and university curricula. “This is a historic document. It will show us the economy we inherited after the July-Aug mass uprising,” he said. “Our blood curdles to know how they plundered the economy. The sad part is they looted the economy openly,” he said, adding that even multilateral agencies that monitor the economy were also largely silent when this plunder took place.
Bhattacharya said the panel worked independently.
