Terrorist financing and money laundering are under surveillance before the 12th parliament election the country. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has announced the next general election in the country will be held in the first week of January 2024.
A senior official of the Home Ministry told The Daily Observer that some vested groups might be involved in inciting communal violence across the country before the 12th parliament election.
Someone behind the screen is financing to create violence to destroy communal harmony. Law enforcing agencies are keeping an eye to prevented such terrorist financing, sources added.
Electoral violence might start as soon as the candidate lists were formally approved and campaigning begins in constituencies across the country.
The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), a central agency to combat money laundering and terrorist financing, convened a meeting with various government agencies, including the law enforcers.
According to law enforcing agency all the agencies would collectively contain illegal financial activities, including hundi, online gambling, gaming, betting, forex trading, and crypto currency dealings.
Among others, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (BTRC), Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the Bangladesh Police, its Special Branch (SB), Transnational and Cyber Crime Department of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP), as well as intelligence agencies and private sector entities joined the meeting.
The financial sector regulator also noted that the BFIU, along with other agencies, is working to prevent all sorts of money laundering and terrorist financing.
The BFIU is consistently undertaking awareness campaigns to stop the financial crimes. Moreover, the unit is consistently providing intelligence reports to law enforcement agencies.
It also has identified pertinent websites, apps, Facebook pages, and YouTube contents associated with the illicit activities, and forwarded them to law enforcement and regulatory authorities.
Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) Habibul Awal has rightly said that law enforcement agencies will have to bear the responsibility if there is any communal violence before, during or after the upcoming election. He said this after a meeting with the Bangladesh Hindu-Buddha-Christian Oikya Parishad where the organisation's General Secretary, Rana Dasgupta, has asked that areas dominated by minorities be declared as 'risky zones' during the election period and that security be beefed up in these areas.
A delegation led by the parishad's General Secretary went to the EC office to submit a memorandum containing their demands to prevent violence centring the polls.
According to Habibul, the parishad said in the meeting that there was communal violence in the past during the elections. They still fear that such communal clashes and violence may occur in the future.
