Dhaka to Dorchester: Hasina-era officials disposing UK assets amid probe in Bangladesh, says report

As Bangladesh prepares to commemorate one year of student-led revolution that toppled the country’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina , an explosive report suggested that in the past year, Bangladeshis linked to the Hasina regime have made significant property transactions.

The report by The Guardian and the campaign group Transparency International stated that several Bangladeshis, under scrutiny in Dhaka, have either sold, transferred or refinanced their UK properties, especially in London. When it comes to the timeline, the report stated that all these transactions took place shortly before the revolution rocked Bangladesh.

The luxury UK real estate has been at the centre of the drama between Hasina and her co and Bangladesh’s current interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus . Investigators in Dhaka have been probing the allegations that powerful and politically connected figures under the previous regime exploited their senior positions to loot state contracts and the Bangladeshi banking system.

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The interim government alleged that the Hasina regime managed to channel millions looted from Bangladesh into UK properties. In light of this, the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) froze £90 million worth of property belonging to members of the Rahman family in May.

Three weeks later, the NCA froze over £170m of assets belonging to Saifuzzaman Chowdhury. It is pertinent to note that Chowdhury was the former land minister in the Hasina government who amassed a vast fortune under her rule. The Bangladeshi minister’s assets included more than 300 UK properties, ranging from apartments to lavish townhouses.

Some notable mentions

According to the disclosures made to the UK Land Registry, at least 20 “applications for dealing” have been submitted in the past year, concerning property owned by figures under scrutiny by Dhaka. These applications indicated that the properties underwent sale, transfer or change to a mortgage.

Out of these, three properties worth £24.5 million were owned by members of the Sobhan family, the powerful dynasty that owns the Bashundhara business group.

According to The Guardian, until April last year, a four-storey townhouse in Knightsbridge was directly owned by Sayem Sobhan Anvir, Bashundhara’s managing director, via a company based in the United Arab Emirates. The Sobhan family is among several Bangladeshi dynasties that are under investigation by Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for allegations such as money laundering.

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As per the report, the property was transferred to a UK business called Brookview Heights Ltd, free of charge. Brookview is owned by a director of Orbis London, a real estate advisory firm with offices in Liechtenstein and Singapore. The British company has acted for the Sobhan family on property transactions in the past.

The townhouse was eventually sold for £7.35m to a newly formed company, whose sole director is an accountant with no online profile. The same accountant is reportedly the director of other companies as well. In the past, the family has denied “all allegations of wrongdoing and will robustly defend ourselves against these allegations”.

Apart from this, two more individuals have come under the scrutiny of ACC. One is Chowdhury’s brother, Anisuzzaman, while the other is a successful British-Bangladeshi property developer, whose name The Guardian has chosen not to mention. When it comes to Anisuzzaman Chowdhury, the UK’s land registry data shows market activities on four of his properties.

They include the sale of a £10m Georgian townhouse on the fringes of Regent’s Park, central London, completed last July. According to The Guardian, the other three are understood to be put on refinancing. Meanwhile, Chowdhury’s lawyers argue that he did not believe that there was any legitimate reason for any of his assets to be frozen and that the sale of the Regent’s Park property was agreed back in 2023, before the revolution rocked Bangladesh.

The other three applications dealt with properties owned by the son and nephew of Salman F Rahman, who runs the Beximco business group, one of Bangladesh’s largest conglomerates. Both Ahmed Shayan Rahman and Ahmed Shahryar Rahman are under investigation by the ACC.

Lawyers for the Rahmans denied any wrongdoing and argued that “political upheaval” in Bangladesh had led to allegations being made against many people. They made it clear that the two brothers would “engage with any investigation which takes place in the UK”.

Dhaka raises alarm

In June this year, a Bangladeshi delegation led by the country’s interim Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus arrived in London to forge stronger ties with the United Kingdom. At that time, Ahsan Mansur, the central bank governor who is leading his country’s efforts to repatriate assets, called for more measures against Hasina-era officials.

“We are aware of efforts to liquidate assets, and we would like the UK government to consider more freezing orders,” Mansur said. “Measures to block transactions would give us hope of following due process to repatriate assets,” he added.

His calls were echoed by ACC Chair Mohammad Abdul Momen, who asked the NCA to consider freezing the assets of several individuals, amid a flurry of post-revolutionary property market activity.

The UK government is facing pressure to do something in this regard, from within as well. Joe Powell MP, the chair of an all-party parliamentary group examining corruption and tax, urged authorities to move quickly with the investigation. “History tells us that assets can quickly evaporate unless swift steps are taken to freeze those assets while investigations are underway,” he said.

Powell welcomed the actions already taken by the NCA but urged it to “expand the net as soon as possible”. The Labour MP is leading the group of parliamentarians that is looking at how London real estate is being used to transfer wealth by the elites around the world. The group became more active following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.