Nearly six months have passed since the people of Bangladesh voted for their new government.
As an unelected government without a popular mandate, the Interim Government could only exert its will through a series of ordinances led by councils and committees.
Absent any parliamentary vote, the committee decisions amounted to little more than decrees from on high and were all too frequently pushed through by advisors with personal connections to the Interim Government.
Many of those councils were focused on reforming the country’s economy and took aim at businesses, industrial leaders, and banks they deemed, without evidence, to be corrupt. Now, the country’s newly and democratically elected government is wrestling with just how best to approach the chaos sowed under the Interim Government’s leering eye.
In a 2025 exclusive interview with Reuters, Muhammad Yunus said that Sheikh Hasina had faked the country’s economic growth, setting the tone for how he and his advisors would approach economic development. If everything was fake, then they needed to make it true and real.
So the Interim Government began conjuring a series of allegations against a handful of industrial groups it claimed, without evidence, were a driving force behind all that ‘fakery’. These groups, who supported many of the country’s key industries, such as steel making and textile production, as well as production of daily essentials like power generation and edible oils, suddenly found themselves under fire. Many of leaders of these groups – including Salman F Rahman from Beximco Group, the largest textile and pharmaceutical company in the country, the former textile minister Golam Dastagir Gazi from the heavy industry Gazi Group and Md Obaidul Karim of the pharmaceutical and infrastructure focused Orion Group – were targeted or arrested on a whole swath of trumped up charges of embezzlement, money laundering, even crimes against humanity.
Made possible in large part by the country’s Anti-Corruption Commission, the ACC worked in tandem with then-governor of the central bank Ahsan Mansur, who had been parachuted in by Muhammad Yunus despite being constitutionally too old for the role. Mansur and the ACC targeted these businesses and individuals, summarily seizing assets and property, orchestrating board resignations and filling seats with allies while failing to present concrete evidence of wrongdoing. Despite this, few have had their accounts reopened or their travel ban lifted, even after Mansur’s departure as governor, and remain in limbo nearly two years later. As a result, the country’s banking environment has been wholly reshaped and private sector investment has all but disappeared.
While the Interim Government was in power, industrial expansion stagnated and many businesses faced severe credit and cash flow crises. Some factories have had to massively reduce their workforce or even shut down as a result, leading to job losses and decreased economic performance overall, hampered by the fact that inflation is continuing to outpace wages in the country, and the country is struggling to cope with the impacts of the US-Israel war on Iran on fuel prices. When Mansur and the Interim Government were in power, many raised concerns about their economic approaches, highlighting that they were contrary to proper banking conventions. These concerns were ignored but serious allegations have now come to light, with the former governor now embroiled in a scandal about his use of the Bank’s CSR funds.
The country’s new democratic government is facing a pivotal fork in the road: do they carry on with the Interim Government’s legacy, which former members have since come out against, accusing it of being run by a secret seven member ‘kitchen cabinet’? Or do they forge their own path and build a brighter future for Bangladesh?
There are several key business groups that the new government must decide how to negotiate with. In the case of the S Alam Group, the new government appears to have chosen to uphold the Interim Government’s unsubstantiated allegation that the family illegally renounced their Bangladeshi citizenship despite no evidence of an improper denunciation. In fact, the Interim Government’s adoption of this line was convenient for defending against international arbitration proceedings brought by the S Alam family. If the family were Bangladeshi and not Singaporean, then the Interim Government could skirt the arbitration on a technicality, rather than face an international tribunal where they would have to prove they hadn’t deliberately targeted the S Alam family and damaged the Group’s businesses.
It’s no surprise then that the group most active in upholding this allegation is the NCP, who were partners with the Interim Government, and a member of whose recently stood up in Parliament to make a claim about the group that was so outlandish that a formal correction had to be issued.
In a time of global economic instability, Bangladesh’s economy needs more support now more than ever. Systems which allow industry to flourish need to be put in place, permitting growth of key industries and expansion in others. International banking rules and conventions need to be adhered to and it is promising that the current government is taking a measured approach to reestablishing these processes within key industries. Although tackling issues of corruption and embezzlement, where there is proof they happened, are important, the new government also needs to look for ways to work with businesses, even if that is about reaching settlements.
