Mohammad Elias Brothers Pvt Limited, one of the top loan defaulters, is lobbying the Financial Institution Division for rescheduling its defaulted loans of Tk 892 crore with 20 banks.
Of the outstanding loans, Mohammad Elias Brothers Pvt Limited, known as MEB, owes highest Tk 258.65 crore to state-owned Agrani Bank as per calculation of the Bangladesh Bank updated in August.
National Bank Limited, a first generation private bank, has outstanding loan of Tk 141 crore with Chittagong-based MEB that has established a dozen of manufacturing units, including textiles, glass, plastics, edible oil and beverages from a mere trading house taking huge loans from the banks.
The company owes loans of Tk 60-72 crore to AB Bank Limited, Islamic Bank Bangladesh Limited, South East Bank Limited and Eastern Bank Limited.
It owes loans of Tk 28-56 crore to One Bank Limited, Bank Asia Limited, Uttara Bank Limited, Mercantile Bank Limited and City Bank Limited.
Officials said MEB managing director Shamsul Alam petitioned the Financial Institution Division seeking assistance for restructuring the bad loan in August, about a month after finance minister AMA Muhith placed name of 100 top loan defaulters in parliament.
MEB topped the list.
Financial Institution Division secretary Eunusur Rahman told New Age on Saturday that the petition surprised them.
He said that the petition should have been submitted to the Bangladesh Bank, the authority to allow the commercial banks to restructure non-performing loans.
He said the department had nothing to do with the petition.
At best, the petitions can be forwarded to the central bank without any recommendation, he said.
Officials said that MEB
was lobbying department officials to pressurise the central bank that allowed 11 groups to reschedule their loans of more than Tk 500 crore, altogether over Tk 14,000 crore, in 2015.
MEB managing director Shamsul Alam could not be reached for comment.
The company became a member of Nahar Group of Industries, run by Shamsul Alam’s son Mohammed Shouib Riad as the managing director of the company, which began its operation in 2010.
Mohammed Shouib Riad refused to comment.
When contacted, his personal secretary Mohammad Ali Akbar told New Age on Sunday, ‘My boss would not comment about the defaulted loans.’
Defaulted loans in the country’s banking sector recorded 191 per cent growth in the past eight years to Tk 1,11,347 crore until April 2017, demonstrating that the culture of bad loan flourished further during the back-to-back tenure of the Awami League-led government.
Former interim government adviser Mirza Azizul Islam said that the banks failed to recover loans as major portion of the credit was sanctioned on political consideration.
The defaulters used political links to evade repayment rescheduling the loans, he said.
Former central bank deputy governor Ibrahim Khaled suspected that a chunk of defaulted loans might have been laundered abroad in recent years amid a lull in private investment.
Washington-based Global Financial Integrity, in its latest report released in May 2017 said that illegal fund outflows cost Bangladesh $8.97 billion in 2014.
It said that Bangladesh lost $75.15 billion due to trade miss-invoicing and other unrecorded outflows between 2005 and 2014 which demonstrated that the capital flight from the country was much higher than foreign direct investment the country received.
Source: New Age
