The Chairman of much discussed and criticized business conglomerate - S Alam Group, has submitted an international arbitration claim arguing that Dhaka’s efforts to recover assets it alleges were illegally funnelled overseas have cost his family’s business “hundreds of millions” of dollars. Lawyers for Saiful Alam and his family filed the request for arbitration on Monday to the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington.
In the claim, the family argues that it has been the victim of a “targeted campaign of arbitrary asset freezing, confiscation and value destruction” by the interim government of Muhammad Yunus, who was installed after a popular uprising overthrew the regime of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year.
The case is a potential setback to the Yunus government’s efforts to claw back billions of dollars that it says were diverted out of the country under Sheikh Hasina’s 15-year rule. An economic white paper commissioned by the Bangladeshi government and published in December estimated that toll at about $234bn.
Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H. Mansur, who is leading the government’s asset recovery effort, accused the S Alam family of diverting about $12bn out of the country’s banking system. “Where is the money?” he said. S Alam, which has interests in sectors including food, construction, garments and banking, has said there is “no truth” to Mansur’s allegations.
The arbitration claim was made under a 2004 bilateral investment treaty between Bangladesh and Singapore, where the S Alam family is based. Family members obtained Singapore citizenship between 2021 and 2023, having renounced Bangladeshi nationality in 2020, according to legal documents seen by the FT. The S Alam family has argued previously that as Singaporean citizens, they should be protected by rights granted by Bangladesh’s 1980 law on foreign private investment.
PT/ra
