S Alam threatens int’l legal action against govt: FT

S Alam Group owner Mohammed Saiful Alam has initiated a legal effort as a Singaporean citizen to recover financial losses he claims were caused by the Bangladeshi government freezing his assets and harming his investments, The Financial Times reports.

The dispute stems from actions taken by the interim government following the ousting of prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

Alam says his family’s bank accounts were frozen, they were subjected to travel bans, and they lost control of their companies, all while facing investigations for alleged money laundering without formal notification.

S Alam has sent a “notice of dispute” to Chief Adviser Prof Muhammad Yunus and key advisers, warning that if the matter is unresolved within six months, he will pursue international arbitration under a 2004 bilateral investment treaty between Bangladesh and Singapore.

The December 18 notice states that 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.

The notice was sent by lawyers of Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, an American law firm, according to the FT report.

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 notice states.

“Those acts and omissions, which are ongoing, have violated and continue to violate the investors’ rights under [investment treaties] and the laws of Bangladesh, and give rise to the present dispute.”

The Bangladesh government did not respond to a request for comments on the letter.

Ahsan H Mansur, who was appointed Bangladesh’s central bank governor following the toppling of Hasina’s regime in August, told the FT in October that Saiful Alam, his associates, and other groups had siphoned money out of the banking system after taking over leading banks with the help of members of a powerful military intelligence agency.

Mansur, a former IMF official, alleged that they used methods such as loans to the banks’ new shareholders and inflated import invoices as part of what he called the “biggest, highest robbing of banks by any international standards”.

S Alam Group, which has interests in sectors including food, construction, garments, and banking, has said there is “no truth” to Mansur’s allegations.

A spokesperson for Bangladesh’s central bank said, “The issues are under investigation and the central bank has refrained from any comment for the betterment of the investigation outcomes.”

Alam’s letter is an early indicator of the hurdles Bangladesh’s interim government faces in its attempts to reclaim money it says was taken out of the banking system under the regime of Hasina.

LondonGBDESK//