Mohammed Saiful Alam, the founder and chairman of conglomerate S Alam Group has launched legal measures to address what he claims are losses caused by the interim government’s actions in freezing his assets and damaging his investments, reports the British newspaper Financial Times.
According to the report published on Monday (23 December), in a notice of dispute addressed to Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus and several of his close advisers, Mohammad Saiful Alam’s legal representatives warned that unless the dispute is resolved within six months, they will initiate international arbitration.
The legal notice cites a 2004 bilateral investment treaty between Bangladesh and Singapore, where the S Alam family has been based since renouncing their Bangladeshi citizenship in 2020; the family reportedly obtained permanent residency in Singapore in 2011 and citizenship between 2021 and 2023, according to FT.
In a letter dated 18 December, Mohammad Saiful Alam’s legal team, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, alleged that the family had been stripped of their rights to their companies and subjected to investigations without formal notice.
“The value of the investors’ investments has been destroyed, in whole or in part, through the acts and omissions of Bangladesh, its agencies and instrumentalities,” the letter stated.
Following the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government, multiple allegations of financial malfeasance surfaced, including claims that Saiful Alam secured thousands of crores in bank loans through fraudulent entities tied to banks under his control.
The interim government has responded by launching investigations into these allegations, freezing the bank accounts of Saiful Alam and his family, imposing travel bans, and initiating legal actions.
It has also restricted the lending capabilities of S Alam-owned banks, replaced their management, and annulled several business deals, which, according to S Alam Group’s lawyers, was done “arbitrarily and without due process", added the FT.
In November, Mohammad Saiful Alam asserted that his and his family's Singaporean citizenship and an international investment agreement offer their enterprise protection against what he deemed as intimidation and undue pressure from the Bangladesh Bank.
This claim was highlighted in a formal letter sent by their legal representatives to the Bangladesh Bank Governor Dr Ahsan H Mansur, warning of legal recourse through an international arbitration court should their business interests suffer unjust harm.
In an interview with Financial Times in October, Dr Ahsan H Mansur accused Mohammad Saiful Alam and his associates of siphoning at least Tk1.2 trillion —equivalent to $10 billion from the Bangladesh Bank during the tenure of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
S Alam Group is on the brink of shutting down its factories due to its inability to import raw materials following the freezing of its bank accounts.
This group, painstakingly built over four decades by the collective efforts of entrepreneurs, workers, and officials, now faces a crisis threatening the jobs of over one lakh employees.
Economists and affected workers assert that keeping these factories operational could shield a large number of labourers from joblessness.
