MD MEHEDI HASAN

Reform, in Bangladesh, has a short shelf life. Not long after the interim government began cleaning up the country’s rotten banking sector, the BNP administration walked back much of the work. A new law now lets the former owners of five scandal-plagued Shariah banks buy their way back in. The price? A mere 7.5 percent upfront of whatever the state pumped in to keep the institutions alive.

The government and Bangladesh Bank together injected Tk 35,000 crore into what became “Sommilito Islami Bank”, a state-run vehicle created to absorb the wreckage of First Security Islami Bank, Social Islami Bank, Union Bank, Global Islami Bank, and Exim Bank. Under the Bank Resolution Act 2026, former owners can reclaim the lot for Tk 2,625 crore -- with the rest repayable over two years at a gentle 10 percent simple interest. It is, as one economist drily noted, a reward rather than a reckoning. The amount is also meagre compared to what these very owners allegedly siphoned out through years of rule-bending.

The five banks were not victims of misfortune. They were victims of their owners. Four were dominated by S Alam Group, whose chairman, Mohammed Saiful Alam, stands accused of using depositors’ money as a personal treasury. The fifth, Exim Bank, was long the fiefdom The

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