Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr. Ahsan Mansur is currently visiting London, with the tracing and recovery of funds laundered from Bangladesh by beneficiaries of the previous Awami League regime is a key agenda. It is widely believed that a significant portion of these funds have been invested in the UK property market .
To that end, he has been meeting with relevant British government officials about initiating the process. On Monday, he held a meeting with the 47-strong all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on responsible tax and corruption.
Prior to the meeting though, members of the APPG believe they may have been targeted by a “disinformation” campaign aimed at discrediting the man leading efforts to trace funds allegedly laundered from Bangladesh into the UK, reports The Guardian.
MPs raised the alarm after receiving emails about Dr Mansur, who was installed as the governor of Bangladesh Bank last year, shortly after the Uprising that overthrew "the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina," as The Guardian put it.
Mansur has made no secret of his belief that some of the money stolen by the fallen regime's allies may have been used to buy UK property, and is seeking help from the British government as well as private companies to track down the tens of billions siphoned out of Bangladesh during the AL's prolonged spell in government, engineered by more than one controversial election.
The MPs fear that Britain’s efforts to assist Bangladesh could be further clouded by an apparent smear campaign against Mansur involving "news articles by fake journalists," The Guardian said.
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The method will be familiar to Bangladeshis who have faced the same sort of online campaign for opposing the AL. Indeed, it carries the signature of the CRI, the AL's now defunct think tank.
The email's sender, who according to The Guardian claimed to be a journalist, sent links to a website called International Policy Digest, featuring two articles about apparent displays of wealth by Mansur’s daughter and questioning why she was not being investigated.
Neither of the articles’ supposed authors appears to have any other profile as a journalist, according to The Guardian. They even found that the pictures of the journalists in their profiles on the site were actually stock images.
Both Mansur and the MPs on the committee raised concerns that the emails were part of a concerted disinformation campaign.
Mansur, a former IMF official, who previously lived and worked in Washington, told The Guardian he believed that people under investigation for money laundering were trying to “diminish my reputation and target me in various ways”.
He added that his daughter was a US citizen who had little to do with Bangladesh.
One APPG member, Rupa Huq, received a separate email from a UK public relations firm called Palatine Communications, also linking to the International Policy Digest content.
The email said that if Mansur was prepared to “impugn the integrity of Tulip Siddiq”, then he and his family should also face scrutiny. Mansur has had no involvement in the cases against Tulip Siddiq.
He told The Guardian he had never made any comments about Siddiq.
Members of the APPG are reported to have referred the emails to parliamentary cyber security advisers, as well as to the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, which is investigating disinformation.
“I urge the relevant parliamentary authorities to investigate thoroughly – we must get to the bottom of who paid for this, and why, in order to understand how we can best protect ourselves,” The Guardian quotes APPG member Phil Brickell as saying.
A spokesperson for Palatine Communications told The Guardian: “We have nothing to do with, and know nothing of, the authorship of this article, but nor did we ever claim it represented the gospel truth."
Finally a spokesperson for International Policy Digest told The Guardian that the person who had actually written the articles had “wished to remain anonymous”, adding that they were confident that the content was “fairly accurate”.