Business Report :
Bangladesh’s Summit Group Chairman Muhammed Aziz Khan has been named one of the richest people in Singapore.
He is the 41st, among the 50 richest individuals in Singapore. He was in the 42nd position in 2023.
According to American business magazine Forbes World’s Billionaires List 2024, published in April 2 this year, Aziz Khan ranked 2,545th out of 2,781 billionaires in 78 countries across the world with a net worth of $1.12 billion. Energy sector has been mentioned the list as his income sector.
The magazine said Bangladeshi born Muhammed Aziz Khan, 68, is a permanent resident of Singapore. For this reason, he had to give up his Bangladeshi citizenship. Summit Group is one of the top private sector business conglomerates of Bangladesh. The group has business in power, ports, fibre optics, real estate and liquefied natural gas sectors.
French billionaire Bernard Arnault has once again secured the top spot on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list for the second consecutive year with an estimated fortune of $233 billion and Tesla founder Elon Musk secured 2nd position with $195 billion. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos secured 3rd position with $194 billion, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg placed 4th position with $177 billion, Microsoft’s Bill Gates secured 7th position with $128 billion, and Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett placed 6th position with $133 billion.
Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani is among the top 10 in the list with $116 billion while Gautam Adani placed in 17th position with $84 billion. The United States has the highest number of billionaires in the list. The country has a total of 813 billionaires in the Forbes list.
Forbes said the Chinese are the most in the list of the top rich after the Americans. The number of billionaires in China including Hong Kong is 473. India ranks third in the list of countries based on the number of billionaires. It is a new record for India. Forbes has been using stock prices and currency exchange rates since March 8 this year to compile the list of top billionaires.
The position of the richest in this list of Forbes changes every moment by calculating the rise and fall of the wealth of billionaires.
Aziz’s name came to the fore in the Panama Papers money laundering scandal in 2016. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) had started an investigation in this regard, but it has not been able to complete yet due to government influence and legal complicities.
Summit Group’s corruption in Bangladesh:
Aziz Khan siphoned off almost all the money to Singapore earned through corruption and embezzlement in various sectors including the power sector in Bangladesh. Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) recently revealed such information. Only two months ago, BTRC decided that Summit Communications could transfer its shares without any fee. It, later, withdrew from that decision. It has been alleged that Summit Communications was transferring and selling shares in the name of issuing new shares.
Launched in 2009, Summit Communications has become one of the largest companies in the telecom and internet sector in the country. In March, it sought BTRC’s approval to issue new shares worth Tk 170.5 crore to two separate companies based in Abu Dhabi and Mauritius. According to the application, a total of 14.20 crore new shares will be issued at the rate of Tk 12 each. A month later, it decided to send a letter to the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications for its pre-approval.
Government approval came in the following month. On June 12 this year, BTRC allowed Summit Communications to transfer shares without any charge of 5.5 per cent. Both Summit Communications and BTRC said that 5.55 per cent fee not for new share issue. However, BTRC higher officials said they wanted to charge the fee as the company actually transferring and selling shares.