230 accounts of MFS providers frozen for hundi involvement

The Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) on Wednesday froze 230 accounts of several mobile financial service providers as the account holders were allegedly involved in hundi. 

Remittance inflow to Bangladesh recently decreased significantly despite a record number of workers having gone abroad in recent time.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

An official of BIFU, on condition of anonymity, said that sending money from abroad might have recently increased through hundi cartel, an illegal cross-border financial transaction system.

Under such a situation, remittances through formal channels have decreased.

The BFIU will beef up its monitoring on hundi more in the days ahead such that remittances increase through the banking channel. In addition, legal action will be taken against the persons involved in hundi.

Remittances to Bangladesh declined 7.4 per cent year-on-year to $1.52 billion in October. October's receipts were also 1 per cent lower than in the preceding month.

Remittance dropped 2.03 per cent year-on-year to $7.19 billion in the first four months of the current fiscal year, data from the Bangladesh Bank showed yesterday.

The poor show in the remittance sector came despite 8.75 lakh migrant workers leaving the country for jobs in the first nine months of 2022. The figure was 6.17 lakh in 2021 and 2.17 lakh in 2020.