S Alam threatens int’l arbitration against BD
Staff Reporter :
Mohammed Saiful Alam, founder and chairman of the S Alam Group, along with members of his family, has warned Bangladesh Bank Governor Ahsan H Mansur of potential international arbitration proceedings against Bangladesh, reports the Financial Times.
The warning follows Mansur’s allegations, made in an FT interview, that Saiful Alam and his associates siphoned off at least Tk 1.2 trillion ($10 billion) from Bangladeshi banks under the regime of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Saiful Alam, citing an international investment treaty and his Singaporean citizenship, argued that these agreements offer him protection against what he described as a “campaign of intimidation” by Bangladesh Bank against his conglomerate.
A letter from the law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, acting on behalf of Saiful Alam, his wife Farzana Parveen, and his sons Ashraful Alam and Asadul Alam Mahir, accused Mansur of making “inflammatory and unsubstantiated public comments.”
It described these remarks as part of a campaign targeting the S Alam Group, which employs approximately 200,000 people directly and indirectly in Bangladesh.
The letter represents Saiful Alam’s strongest response yet to allegations levelled by the interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, which came to power
following the ousting of Sheikh Hasina after a student-led uprising.
In his interview, Mansur, a former IMF official and current central bank governor, alleged that Saiful Alam and his associates, with the assistance of military intelligence agency DGFI, carried out forced takeovers of leading banks.
These takeovers reportedly facilitated the siphoning of Tk 2 trillion ($16.7 billion) from Bangladesh’s banking system through mechanisms such as loans to new shareholders and inflated import invoices.
Mansur described these activities as the “biggest, highest robbing of banks by any international standards.”
He further stated that investigations into these allegations are ongoing, with extensive documentation required due to the scale and duration of the activities.
The letter sent on behalf of Saiful Alam rejected Mansur’s claims as “deliberately false and defamatory,” emphasising that Bangladesh and Singapore have a bilateral investment protection treaty signed in 2004.
It stated that Mansur’s comments as the central bank governor are attributable to the Bangladeshi state under the treaty.
The letter also referred to protections granted by a 1980 Bangladeshi law on foreign private investment.
While the investors expressed a preference for resolving disputes amicably and in accordance with the law, they warned that continued “false statements” by Mansur would leave them with no option but to initiate legal action against him personally for the damages caused.