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Bangladesh has approached the UK for help probing the overseas wealth of allies of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, as the new government cracks down on members of her ousted autocratic regime.
Ahsan Mansur, Bangladesh’s new central bank governor, said the new administration is investigating whether Hasina’s regime diverted at least Tk2tn (£13bn) overseas from the banking system.
Mansur told the Financial Times he had sought the help of the UK, one of several countries where the Bangladeshi authorities believe diverted assets may be held. He said such assets may also be in the US, Singapore and the UAE.
The UK government has “been very helpful. The High Commissioner was in my office and they offered lots of technical support,” said Mansur.
In particular, Mansur said the Bangladeshi authorities wanted to identify the source of funds used to pay for a UK property portfolio worth £150mn owned by the former land minister in Sheikh Hasina’s government.
He said probing the assets was “an issue that we’ll seek help from the UK government to the extent these assets can be recovered”.
UK officials confirmed a meeting took place, but declined to comment on what was discussed.
Elements of Bangladeshi civil society long accused Sheikh Hasina and members of her government of corruption. The country has strict currency controls that allow citizens to transfer only a few thousand dollars overseas each year.
“A heist of this order could not have taken place without the knowledge of the prime minister,” Mansur said. But he added that the investigations were at a “very early stage”.
Sheikh Hasina fled to India last month, but her whereabouts within the country are unknown and she could not be reached for comment.
The allegations could become awkward for Sir Keir Starmer’s new Labour government, whose City minister Tulip Siddiq is Sheikh Hasina’s niece. No suggestion has been made that Siddiq is involved in wrongdoing. Siddiq did not respond to a request for comment.
Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning economist and Bangladesh’s interim leader after a popular uprising last month, has also met with the UK’s high commissioner to Dhaka to request Britain’s help.
Bangladeshi authorities “are going to recover the money which has been stolen from Bangladesh and siphoned off abroad,” said Shafiqul Alam, Yunus’s press secretary. “That’s one of the priorities of this government.”
Sheikh Hasina was in power for two decades in Bangladesh, a country of 170mn people and the world’s second-largest garments exporter.
Her rule was marred by allegations of vote rigging, rights abuses and widespread corruption, triggering the student protests that toppled her government.
The overseas wealth of allies of her Awami League party has received extensive scrutiny in Bangladesh and internationally.
Transparency International UK earlier this year cited the British real estate portfolio owned by companies linked to former land minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury as an example of “unexplained wealth” that authorities should probe.
An FT review of HM Land Registry and UK Companies House records found that entities controlled by Chowdhury acquired at least 280 properties for more than £150mn.
The properties were acquired since 2016, with the bulk bought between 2019 and 2022, according to the Land Registry’s data. Chowdhury was land minister between 2019 and 2024.
They include the freehold to the listed Emerson Bainbridge House in Fitzrovia, central London, 61 properties in Tower Hamlets, east London, and the site of a Co-op supermarket in Bristol.
The financing of the UK property purchases are unclear, although the companies have registered charges at Companies House, indicating the use of mortgage debt.
Ajmalul Hossain KC, a lawyer for Chowdhury, said his client had “nothing to hide” and denied he had stolen anything. He said Chowdhury was a fourth-generation businessman who started acquiring his wealth in the 1990s before he went into politics.
The former minister told a press conference earlier this year that his overseas assets came from international business interests.
Hossain added that members of the Awami League were being subject to “witch-hunts” by Yunus’s “unconstitutional” government. “There is a significant risk that there will be a miscarriage of justice caused to Mr Chowdhury,” he said.
Mohammad Arafat, Sheikh Hasina’s former junior information minister, said an investigation would clear the former prime minister and her allies.
“Everything [the new government] is trying to portray as huge corruption; and they’re trying to blame the former prime minister,” he said. “It’s good that it goes through due process . . . They have to prove it.”
The UK government said that, in line with its long-standing policy, it would not comment on whether a mutual legal assistance request had been made by authorities in Bangladesh.