Various financial crimes, including some shocking scams, have recently emerged as one of the most challenging tasks in law enforcement amid a breakdown of social and moral values, opine experts.
Criminologists and law-enforcers observe that organised gangs of criminals are now focusing on various potential sectors for high-stake offences due to lax administrative supervision and easy getaway.
They say bank and share market scams, money laundering, bank robberies, gold smuggling, human trafficking, and cheque or credit card or mortgage forgeries have taken an alarming upturn.
Inadequate punishment, lengthy judicial process and improper charge-framing against the offenders are seen as factors behind the rise in financial crime.
Law-enforcers arrested many of the criminals on a number of occasions. But they secured bail by hiring highly capable lawyers, and reengaged in the same offences.
The experts think as the spectrum of economy is getting complex nowadays, burglary, forgery and other financial crimes are being committed in so many forms.
"In recent times financial scandals have reached an all-time high in several sectors due to minor punishment against major crimes," former chairman of Association of Bankers Bangladesh (ABB) Mohammed Nurul Amin told the FE.
The managing director and CEO of a private bank said, "We do not have a functional Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) that can collect correct information of financial crimes, and its consequence is that most of the criminals are out of proper investigation."
He noted that the country's investigative and law-enforcement agencies are not well-equipped with adequate knowledge and procedures to investigate the filed cases regarding financial crimes and corporate corruption.
In recent times, robbers got away with Tk 160 million from a Sonali Bank branch in Kishoreganj by digging a tunnel into the bank's vault.
Besides, around Tk 3.8 million was taken away from another Sonali Bank branch in Bogra by digging a 30-foot tunnel.
The burglars also looted Tk 19 million from Brac Bank's Joypurhat town branch. The incident is not the first one for the bank, as gold ornaments and other valuables worth several millions taka were looted by a gang from its Dhanmondi branch in 2008.
Over the bank break in Kishoreganj, the law-enforcement agencies could not submit their investigation report in eight months.
SHS Abu Zafar, deputy general manager of Vigilance and Control Division of Sonali Bank, said the suspects so far arrested over Bogra's Adamdighi branch burglary are now enlarged on bail.
The investigation over the Sonali Bank Kishoreganj branch is going on, but no report has been filed yet, he also said.
Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) members arrested seven people regarding the Brac Bank robbery in Joypurhat. They arrested Raja Mia, who was also the ringleader behind the bank's Dhanmondi branch loot.
He got only 18 months' imprisonment for his involvement in looting, the official added.
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigation teams have recently unearthed some of the biggest scandals in public and private banks. But the criminals have gone scot-free so far.
"This is why banking scandals are rising significantly," said an official of BB.
He pointed out Destiny Group, Hallmark Group, Bismillah Group and Basic Bank scandals involving nearly Tk 141 billion.
Ashraful Islam, special superintendent of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Bangladesh Police, said in recent times they have observed more than 350 businessmen involved in pecuniary crimes, like - money laundering and over-and under-invoicing etc.
The official identified absence of proper monitoring and lack of punishment as major factors of encouragement for rackets of financial criminals.
He said inquiries conducted by CID have found most of the businessmen involved in financial crimes are using fake addresses for opening letters of credit (LCs).
An officer of Customs Intelligence and Investigation Department (CIID) said the law-enforcers arrested more than 200 people for involvement in gold smuggling, and filed 90 cases in 150 such incidents of recent times.
"Most of those arrested for gold smuggling now are on bail," he regretted.
Dr Zia Rahman, chairman of Department of Criminology of Dhaka University, said financial crimes always happen more or less. But in the recent times, their number has grown significantly due to absence of social morality.
He said, "We have been observing that the nature of financial crimes has changed during the last few years, as our economy gets more complex. With urbanisation and industrialization, the economic crimes are growing very fast."
He finds three key reasons for a spurt of financial crimes: lack of proper investigation by law-enforcers, poor punishment, and absence of rehabilitation programmes.
Dr Rahman said due to lack of adequate punishment through proper investigation and correctional measures, new players also get in the underworld of crime.
He mentioned that the prison authority has no effective programme to motivate the criminals to leave their profession of disgrace.
"According to the basics of criminology, improvement process of the criminals by jail authorities is mandatory for eradication of crimes from the society," he added.
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