Finance Minister AMA Muhith on Wednesday pointed his finger at some new
NGOs launched during the rule of former BNP-led alliance government and said
they might be behind the funding of militant groups.
Referring to such NGOs, he said
there were some investments in the country that might not have directly helped
the militants, but helped their patrons.
Muhith told reporters at the Finance
Ministry that a lot of things can be uncovered looking deep
into the activities of some new NGOs who got approval during the tenure of
Mujaheed Ali Ahsan Mohammed Mujaheed, Jamaat secretary general and former
social welfare minister , amid claims by a minister that JMB militants were
involved in last month's BDR carnage.
Commerce Minister Faruk Khan,
also coordinator of the probe bodies on BDR carnage, told the media recently
that a link of JMB militants was found behind the February 25 BDR mutiny and
mayhem.
During the previous BNP-led 4-party
alliance government, some 473 local and 25 foreign NGOs have been enlisted with
the NGO Bureau. Of them, 129 local and eight foreign NGOs got enlisted in the fiscal
2006-07.
Since 1990, the NGO Bureau has
approved 2,367 local and foreign NGOs who run on foreign funding.
Muhith said the immediate past
caretaker government had taken some good initiatives to stop terrorist
financing and money laundering and these should continue.
Besides, he said, Bangladesh Bank
is trying to be a member of EGMOND Group, which deals with international
financial intelligence, to exchange information on suspicious financial
transactions.