Some proven easy means of repatriating laundered money have been shown by some western countries that experts find as the fastest and less-expensive way Bangladesh can follow in its current crackdown.
The United Kingdom, the United States, Germany and Italy are among the countries that tell the tales of success in bringing back stolen money from abroad by way of taxing.
Sources say many of the countries have recovered their siphoned-off money as taxes, penalties and interest on accusation of tax evasion.
Having financial statements and authority to keep surveillance on country's entry and exit points, the National Board of Revenue (NBR) could help in recovering stolen assets as taxes, experts said.
Former lead economist at World Bank's Dhaka office Dr Zahid Hussain says the money could be brought back in the form of taxes if Bangladesh has got MLA with the destinations.
A Bangladesh Bank official thinks recovery of money is a lengthy and costly process where many countries found 50 per cent of their stolen money spent for legal-process management.
For example, asset-recovery initiative by Switzerland from former first lady of the Philippines Imelda Marcos, started in 1990, has not been resolved during the last 30 years to send it back to the Philippine government.
In most of the cases it took at least 10 to 12 years to recover stolen money.
"The best way is to bring back money through taxing where a country can recover at least 45 per cent of the laundered money through penalizing an individual or company for tax evasion," says the central bank official.
Professor Dr Mustafizur Rahman, distinguished fellow of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), however, finds such process of retrieving stashed-away asset through taxation not feasible because of not having capital account like in developed countries.
"We need to ask for sending back the full amount of money as Bangladesh follows current-account system," he says.
Mutual Trust Bank Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Syed Mahbubur Rahman feels that it is quite difficult to prove right on stolen asset in another country.
"Most launderers avoid registering their asset in original name," says Mr Rahman, also former chairman of the Association of Bankers Bangladesh (ABB).
He stresses the necessity of capital account-conversion system in Bangladesh to claim and bring back foregone money in an easier way.
Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) data show the United States recovered US$6.5 billion in taxes with penalty and interest from 45,000 taxpayers in 2009-2023 period under its Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program.
France has recovered its stolen asset worth 1.2 billion euros and Italy 570 million euros, the UK 150 million pounds and Spain 210 million euro as taxes from its taxpayers having secret accounts in Swiss banks.
Germany recovered 1.60 billion euros worth of taxes in 2010 on the basis of tips on secret bank accounts of its taxpayers from Swiss Liechtenstein bank in Switzerland.
A senior official at the CIC has said it's a criminal offence to siphon off money which other countries, including India, track through appointing tax official in their respective missions in favourite destinations of capital flight.
As per the Income Tax Act, Bangladesh has taxing right to the assets originating in the country and siphoned away to another country.
Analysing value of assets, enforcing transfer-pricing law, finding out the ways culprits launder money are the key aspects where the NBR has the expertise, the CIC official told the FE correspondent.
"We have double- taxation -avoidance treaty with 42 countries but exchange- of-information clauses in the treaties were not well-defined to seek data on taxpayers of Bangladesh," he added.
The DTA has a clause titled 'cooperation on collection of taxes' which could be used to collect information from other countries, he said.
A Bangladesh Bank official says the DTA empowers authorities to seek specific information of a taxpayer, bar access to wholesale data on citizens of a country.
A senior income-tax official having expertise in international taxation says both the countries would have to convict a person or company suspecting money laundering and forfeit it as per documentations and proofs.
"Other countries buy data from Swiss bank and investigate those to recover asset for their own country," he adds.
Earlier, the USA had recovered $10 billion equivalent of stolen assets through the process.
Officials hold the view that such voluntary-disclosure initiative would never see success in the existing system in Bangladesh.
In the 2022-23 fiscal budget the government incorporated a provision about repatriation of money allowing payment of tax at a flat rate. In the entire year, none of the taxpayers did respond to this overture.
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