Staff Reporter :
S Alam Group owner Mohammed Saiful Alam has launched a legal effort as a Singaporean citizen to recover losses he claims were caused by the interim government freezing his assets and harming his investments following the ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The action by Saiful Alam and his family could threaten the government’s attempts to claw back billions of dollars it claims were diverted out of the country under the previous regime, reports UK-based the Financial Times (FT).
In a notice of dispute letter sent to Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus and several of his closest advisers, Alam’s lawyers state that unless the two sides can resolve the dispute within six months they will begin international arbitration, FT report reads.
The lawyers are making the case under a 2004 bilateral investment treaty
between Bangladesh and Singapore, where the S Alam family is based.
According to the 18 December letter, the family obtained permanent residence in Singapore in 2011 and citizenship between 2021 and 2023. It adds that they all renounced their Bangladeshi nationality in 2020.
Following the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government, numerous allegations of financial irregularities surfaced, including claims that Saiful had secured thousands of crores of taka in bank loans using fake companies from banks under S Alam’s ownership.
The letter, sent by lawyers Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan and seen by the Financial Times, alleges that the Alam family’s bank accounts have been frozen and they have been subjected to travel bans and lost control of their companies, while also being investigated by state bodies over potential money laundering without official notice.
It states that banks owned by S Alam have been restricted from lending and had their management teams changed, while deals they had in place have been cancelled by the government “arbitrarily and without due process”.
“The value of the investors’ investments has been destroyed, in whole or in part, through the acts and omissions of Bangladesh, its agencies and instrumentalities,” the Quinn Emanuel letter states.
The government did not respond to the Financial Times’s request for comment.
Dr. Ahsan H Mansur, who assumed the role of central bank governor after Hasina’s toppling in August, told the newspaper in October that Saiful, his associates and other groups had embezzled funds from the banking system by seizing control of leading banks with assistance from members of a powerful military intelligence agency.
Ahsan accused these influential groups of orchestrating financial fraud through methods such as issuing fraudulent loans and inflating import invoices. He characterized these actions as “the biggest, highest robbing of banks by any international standards.”
The S Alam Group, which operates in industries including food, construction, garments and banking, has denied Mansur’s allegations, saying there is “no truth” to his claims.
A spokesperson for Bangladesh Bank said the issues were under investigation, adding that the central bank refrained from commenting to preserve the integrity of the investigation process.
