Digital hundi through mobile financial institutions is now the safe medium of foreign money laundering in the banking sector which is damaging the foreign currency reserves of the country.
There are allegations of direct involvement in money laundering against mobile financial institutions like Bkash, Rocket, Upay, Nagad. These institutions are conducting this activity by targeting expatriates from various countries including Middle East, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Europe and USA.
Tk 75, 000 crore have been smuggled through digital hundi in the last one year. By enticing expats with lucrative benefits, Bkash, Rocket, Upay, Nagad encourage them to send money through them. Despite multiple warnings from Bangladesh Bank, even after taking disciplinary action, the illegal activities of these institutions are not stopped. As a result remittances are not coming to the country as expected.
Last September, remittances of $1.5 billion came in, which is the lowest in the last seven months.
CID investigation said, in the last one year, $7.8 billion have been laundered by digital hundi. This money has been smuggled through 5000 agents of financial service providers (MFS) on mobile phones. Those involved in hundi chose Bkash, Rocket, Upay, Nagad App. Hundi transactions are done through these apps abd they are used not only for hundi transactions, but also for various gaming and gambling. Cash dollars are traded through online forex trading. This reduces the country's foreign exchange reserves.
Recently, the CID and Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) have received evidence of specific allegations of money laundering through digital hundi.
BFIU investigation found that, foreign currency is being illegally collected in the name of MFS institutions including Bkash, Nagad from expatriates in various countries of the world including Saudi Arabia, Australia, Singapore, UAE, UK and USA. Hundi laundering members are sending SMS to Bangladeshi agents through app or social media mentioning MFS account number and amount of expatriate beneficiaries. The agent here is cashing in the beneficiary's number. As a result, expatriate money is not coming to the country in as foreign currency.
A total of 4,00,000 MFS agents have been screened to identify transactions related to digital hundi and illegal gaming, betting, cryptotrading or online forex trading using the MFS platform. By analyzing the transactions of these agents, initially 1, 81, 505 suspicious transactions were identified.
How hundi is done
CID's investigation revealed that from April 1 to July 31, Tk 6 crore 56 lakh 31 thousand 309 were sent to various people from a single agent number. Such amounts were transacted from at least 46 agent numbers. These numbers are located in Nawabganj of Dhaka, Mohammadpur of the capital, Bhanga of Faridpur and Chattogram.
Earlier on September 8, CID arrested Fazle Rabbi from Nawabganj and Shamima Akhtar from Mohammadpur. By interrogating them, CID investigators got the information of eight more people related to digital hundi through various apps and mobile financial services.
The hundis are done in an app called TMI. Mizanur Rahman, Director of TMI Apps, is involved in this. He is based in Rome, Italy. Jahangir Hossain is another director based in Bangladesh. Mizan's wife is Mir Mithila of Nawabganj, Dhaka. Apart from this, names of 20-25 others including Suman, Sabuj, Surja Babu, Aslam Khan, Sajeeb poped up. They are all fugitives now.
Cyber Police Center SI Mehedi Hasan filed a case against them at Mohammadpur police station on September 8.
Fazle Rabbi, who was arrested by CID, told them that Mizan TMI and TopUp24.info in Rome, Italy traded hundi on web apps. Shamima was appointed as admin to manage transactions in Bangladesh properly. How much money to cash in on which number is given instructions through TMI apps. According to Mizanur's instructions, the information about the numbers that Rabbi used to cash in on the development was to be sent to Mithila and Suman.
Meanwhile, Shamima said that she is basically the one who sees all the TMI apps in Bangladesh. Their other director Jahangir is the elder brother of Mithila. He solves all the problems including opening and closing ID of development providers in TMI Apps.
In addition to the TMI and TopUp24.info apps used in Italy, there is another Saudi Arabia-based app called 'EasyCash' for hundi. This app involve Chattogram-based agents to send money to Saudi.
There is a dollar crisis in the country for quite some time. Amid this crisis, the amount of remittances in the country has suddenly decreased at an alarming rate.
According to BFIU report, remittances are decreasing even though sending workers abroad is increasing. Even after discouraging foreign travel in many ways, there is a huge shortage of cash dollars in the country's market.
CID's Additional DIG Kamrul Ahsan said, “Three cases have been registered after the operation against digital hundi. Of these, two are being investigated by the cyber and one by the Financial Crimes Unit. However, those associated with digital hundi are under our surveillance.”
BFIU officials said they are working on digital hundi or money laundering. All types of transactions of institutions providing digital financial services are being scrutinized. Several complaints have been received in the last few months.
@ The article appeared on print and online versions of The Bangladesh Pratidin on October 12, 2022 and has been rewritten in English by Tanvir Raihan.
