KUALA LUMPUR – The Malaysian government is under scrutiny by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in its investigation into a labour market syndicate that allegedly saw authorities fraudulently pocketing monies in a migrant worker scam.
According to news reports on the matter, the ACC’s probe is centred on accusations against three former Bangladeshi MPs who are suspected of participating in the scheme, which is said to have seen a boost in activity once Malaysia entered the picture.
The ACC’s investigation reportedly involves several high-profile individuals, including the wife and daughter of former finance minister A.H.M. Mustafa Kamal, former lawmaker Nizam Uddin Hazari, ex-inspector-general of police Benazir Ahmed, Bangladesh Army retired lieutenant-general Masud Uddin Chowhurry, as well as their associates.
A three-member investigation team led by ACC deputy director Nurul Huda is understood to be heading the probe into the individuals’ illegal assets and operations.
An ACC spokesman told Dhaka’s The Financial Express yesterday that the inquiry has been launched due to allegations of the figures’ involvement in a “lucrative business operation” within the Malaysian labour market.
“Malaysia receives workers from 14 countries, including Bangladesh. However, such a syndicate system does not exist in any other country besides Bangladesh,” the report claimed, alleging that “high-ranking officials” from both governments are complicit in the network.
The allegations, as detailed by the English-language daily, claim that Nizam had in December 2018 obtained a licence for a recruiting agency called Snigdha Overseas Ltd to send workers abroad.
However, in the three and a half years after obtaining the licence, the agency is said to have sent only 100 workers overseas, with its business only picking up after it joined the “Malaysia Syndicate”, which saw “around 8,000” workers sent to Malaysia in the last one and a half years.
Another recruitment agency called Five M International, which was established by Masud in 2015, similarly secured approval to send 8,592 workers to Malaysia – a stark increase from the roughly 2,500 workers it previously sent to the Middle East.
Benazir’s recruitment agency Ahmed International, which ostensibly ranked fifth in the number of workers sent to Malaysia, facilitated the sending of 7,849 workers to Malaysia after a period of relatively slow dealings saw it deliver only 238 workers to other countries.
A total of 9,861 workers are said to have entered Malaysia through another firm, Orbitals Enterprise, owned by Mustafa’s wife Kashmeri Kamal and daughter Nafisa Kamal.
Agencies part of the network supposedly received a “network fee of at least BDT150,000 (RM5,592).”
In a separate report by Bangladeshi newspaper the Dhaka Tribune, the syndicate is said to have sent around 450,000 Bangladeshi workers abroad within just one and a half years, with many of them forced to return home empty-handed after they were “unable to find work”.
Workers, the report said, were charged far above the government-set cost of BDT79,000, with the average worker paying BDT544,000 to secure a job in Malaysia.
As such, the syndicate allegedly managed to amass BDT240 million by overcharging workers, while the Bangladeshi Expatriates’ Welfare and Overseas Employment Ministry supposedly took no action as it instead “facilitated” the syndicate’s activities.
“When the Malaysian labour market reopened in July 2022, the selection of recruiting agencies was left to Malaysia, with only 25 out of 1,520 Bangladeshi agencies being chosen, allegedly with no clear policy,” the report claimed.
It also said that Bangladesh Association of International Recruiting Agencies’s former general secretary, Ruhul Amin Swapan, played a key role in the syndicate, reportedly selecting 69 of the 100 agencies involved, with his own agency, Catharsis International, sending 7,102 workers to Malaysia.
Scoop has reached out to the Malaysian Human Resources Ministry and Home Ministry for their response to the accusations. – August 19, 2024