MUNTAKIM SAAD and MOHAMMAD JAMIL KHAN

At least 5,000 agents of different mobile financial services made suspicious transactions involving around Tk 25,000 crore, meant to be remitted by Bangladeshi expatriates, in the last four months.

The money was channelled through hundi, a cross-border money transfer method that bypasses the legal banking system.

Hundi traders have been luring Bangladeshi migrants into using the illegal channel to send home money. They use local MFS agents to pay the migrants’ relatives or designated persons here in taka against any amount of foreign currency that the migrants want to send home, according to the Criminal Investigation Department of police.

In so doing, the agents deprived the country of around Tk 25,000 crore in remittance in the past four months, ultimately hitting the country’s foreign currency reserves, CID chief Mohammad Ali Mia told journalists at the CID office yesterday.

Analysing the trends, the CID estimated that Bangladesh may have lost around $7.8 billion (around Tk 75,000 crore) in remittance in the last one year.

The CID’s findings, however, give only a partial picture, as they don’t provide detailed data on transactions made through hundi abroad.

CID officials said they launched the probe after the country’s forex market became volatile following the rapid appreciation of the US dollar against the taka in May.