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Bangladesh’s new central bank governor has accused businessmen linked to the ousted Sheikh Hasina’s regime of working with members of the country’s powerful military intelligence agency to siphon $17 billion from the banking sector during her rule.

Ahsan Mansur, who was appointed as the governor of Bangladesh Bank after Sheikh Hasina, in an interview with the Financial Times He fled the country in June – He said that the General Directorate of Forces Intelligence helped take over leading banks.

Mansur said an estimated Tk2 trillion ($16.7 billion) was smuggled out of Bangladesh using methods such as loans to new shareholders following bank takeovers and inflated import bills.

“This is the biggest, highest bank robbery by international standards,” he said. “An incident of this scale has never happened anywhere, it was state-sponsored and could not have happened without intelligence officers holding a gun to (former bank CEOs’) heads.”

The governor said Mohammed Saiful Alam, founder and chairman of industrial conglomerate group S Alam, and his associates had withdrawn “at least $10 billion at minimum” from the banking system after gaining control of the banks with the help of DGFI. “They were giving themselves credit every day,” he said.

In a statement issued by law firm Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan on behalf of Saiful Alam, S Alam Group said there was “no truth” to Mansoor’s allegations.

“The interim government’s coordinated campaign against S Alam Group and other leading companies in Bangladesh has failed to respect even the basic principles of due process,” the statement said.

“This situation has already weakened investors’ confidence and contributed to the breakdown of law and order,” the statement said. “When we look at the group’s records and contributions, we see the governor’s accusations. . . surprising and unfair.”

The Directorate of Inter Services Public Relations, which conducts media investigations of the Bangladesh armed forces, did not respond to a request for comment and DGFI could not be reached for comment.

Sheikh Hasina has been in power for a total of two decades in Bangladesh, a country of 170 million people and the world’s second-largest garment exporter, but her rule has been marred by allegations of vote rigging, jailing of opponents, torture and widespread corruption. The former prime minister fled to India in August and his current whereabouts are unknown.

provisional government Under the chairmanship of Nobel Prize winner Muhammed Yunus Coming to power after his escape, he repeatedly promised to recover funds he claimed were misappropriated by regime members and their associates.

Former IMF official Mansur I told the FT last month Stating that Sheikh Hasina sought help from the UK to investigate the overseas wealth of her allies, he said that the board members of leading banks were targeted under her management.

The board members were “abducted from their homes” by intelligence officers, taken to other locations such as hotels, and told “at gunpoint” to sell all their shares in the banks “to Mr S Alam” and resign as directors. “They did this from one bank to another,” he said.

A former bank CEO told the FT he was forced to resign from his position as part of a forced takeover. Mohammad Abdul Mannan, former CEO of Islami Bank Bangladesh, one of the country’s largest lenders, said he came under pressure from “people connected to the then government” from 2013 onwards.

These included pressure to hire board members recommended by the prime minister’s office and the search of a hotel room used by one of the bank’s foreign executives by “persons connected to state institutions”.

Mannan said he was guided to a board meeting in January 2017 and taken to see a senior defense official, then detained for a full workday to force him to resign.

“They prepared bank letters on fake stationery,” said Mannan, who was appointed chairman of First Security Islami Bank by the central bank in September. “I had to sign a resignation letter”

S Alam moved into banking in the last decade. The group’s website says it has “significant investments” in seven banks, including Islami Bank Bangladesh and First Security Islami Bank.

Bangladesh aims to recover the stolen funds after completing an audit of about a dozen mostly bankrupt banks taken over when Hasina was in government, Mansur said. “We want to use this inspection as evidence in international and local courts,” the governor said.

Bangladesh’s interim government moved to block banks’ share sales following the collapse of Sheikh Hasina’s regime. Authorities now plan to sell the banks’ shares to “quality national or international strategic investors” in order to recapitalize them, Mansour said. The central bank also planned to set up an asset management company to manage or dispose of banks’ non-performing assets.

He said Bangladesh would also try to recover money taken from the country by hiring international law firms to seize assets held by bank shareholders in Dubai, Singapore, the United Kingdom or elsewhere.