As many as top 61 big borrowers collectively owe commercial banks a whooping Tk53,000 crore, and each of them borrow more than Tk500 crore from different lenders, as per a list the central bank prepared.

These borrowers account for 25% of total large loan of Tk2,15,000 crore, which also accounts for 34% of the total loans and advances of Tk6,34,000 crore as of September last year,  according to the Bangladesh Bank data.  

Of them, 21 are loan defaulters, making up 25% of entire default loan valued Tk20,000 crore, it revealed.    

Bangladesh Bank estimated the loan amount borrowed by individual large borrowers with over Tk500 crore each, but it has not any actual statement about the exposure of groups, according to a central bank source.

Beximco Limited, the country’s industrial conglomerate Beximco Group’s flagship company,  is the biggest borrowers and loan defaulters as well, borrowing around Tk3,300 crore from a consortium of 10 lenders, the data said. 

S Alam Group came second taking loan of around Tk6,000 crore in the name of its seven companies having loan exposure of over Tk500 crore each. 

The global recession that affected many of large borrowers, political instability and misuse of banking system with developing cozy relationship, leading to thousands of crores of bad loans or non-performing loans, officials say.

The steep rise in bad loans in the past few years has forced the central bank to come up recently with strong measures to ensure banks do not sweep bad loans under the carpet giving facilities to restructure loan both for the defaulters and non-defaulters. 

On January 27, the central bank had approved a restructuring bad loan policy under which a big borrower would get a maximum of 12 years to repay loans above Tk500 crore. 

“We have seen that globally reputed banks across the world had to close shops due to bad debts because of a few individuals. But now with increasing bad loans by some willful defaulters, the threat looms large over banking sector. It needs to be addressed before it is too late,” said a banker.

He said those who were willful defaulters and took illegal means should be brought to book.

NCC Bank Managing Director Hafiz Ahmed said big loan restructuring for long term is a mismatch between assets and liabilities, as maximum deposits are of short term. 

“Repayment failure of large loan is a serious threat for the banking sector, reducing banks’ capability   to provide fresh loan for long term in future,” he said. 

The veteran banker criticised the big loan restructuring policy and said the central bank’s move will encourage loan defaulters and discourage the good borrowers.  

Among some of the policies, a big borrower can have the facility only once but has to apply for it by June 30 this year and if a borrower fails to repay two instalments consecutively, he will forfeit the facility, and his fate will be decided as per the bankruptcy law. 

Though interest rate on the restructured loan would be fixed by the bank, it has to be more than the aggregate amount of the bank’s cost of funds and 1% interest rate, according to policy. 

The other large borrowers having exposure over Tk500 crore to multiple banks and non-bank financial institutions are – BRAC, Nitol Motors, Grameen Phone, S Alam Edible Oil, Shah Cement Industries, Ananda Shipyard, C.P Bangladesh, Abul Khair Steel, KSRM Steel, S Alam Vegetable Oil, Abdul Monem Sugar Refinery, Pacific Bangladesh Telecom, Abdul Monem, Grameen Shakti, Anwer Khan Modern Hospital, Marrine Vegetable Oils, Mohammed Elias Brothers, IFAD Autos, Zaber and Zubair Fabrics, S Alam Refined Sugar Industries, Rupayan Housing, Best Holdings, Powerpac Mutiara Keraniganj Power Plant, S A Oil Refinery, Western Marine Shipyard, Bashundhara Paper Mills, Rising Steel, Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation, Jamuna Builders, BSRM Steel, The ACME Laboratories, Airtel Bangladesh, Samannaz Super Oil, Mother Textile, BURO Bangladesh, BARAKA Patenga Power, Nurjahan Super Oil, KYCR Coil Industries, PFI Securities, Navana Real Estate, Bashundhara Industrial Complex, Abul Khair Tobacco, Abul Khair Limited, Kabir Steel Re-Rolling Mills, Yasmin Spinning Mills, GPH Ispat, Zubair Spinning Mills, Siddique Traders, S Alam Trading Company, S Alam Cold Rolled Steels, Zaber Spinning, NBL Securities, Max Spining Mills, S Alam and Company, Noman Composite Textile, Deshbandhu Sugar Mills, Banglalink Digital Communication, Dhaka Trading House, Project Builders. 

A central bank official said to recover the bad loans through restructuring is important as many countries like India have adopted such policy.  

To defend the loan restructuring policy for defaulters, BB Governor Atiur Rahman earlier said it was formulated for the sake of country’s economy and employment. “The defaulters, though, get preference from the central bank repeatedly on excuse of the political unrest but so far good borrowers, who maintain their loan repayment regular even after facing the same difficulties, did not get any favour.” 

In its latest monetary policy statement, the BB said the central bank firmly discouraged the abetting of habitual and willful loan repayment defaulter.

It also created room for helping out recovery of genuine businesses distressed by circumstances beyond their control with realistic debt restructuring in line with international best practices, the monetary policy said. 

Britain's biggest bank helped wealthy clients cheat the UK out of millions of pounds in tax, the BBC has learned.

Panorama has seen thousands of accounts from HSBC's private bank in Switzerland leaked by a whistleblower in 2007.

They show bankers helped clients evade tax and offered deals to help tax dodgers stay ahead of the law.

HSBC admitted that some individuals took advantage of bank secrecy to hold undeclared accounts. But it said it has now "fundamentally changed".

The documents, stolen in 2007 by computer expert Herve Falciani working for HSBC in Geneva, contain details of more than 100,000 clients from around the world.

Offshore accounts are not illegal, but many people use them to hide cash from the tax authorities. And while tax avoidance is perfectly legal, deliberately hiding money to evade tax is not.

The French authorities assessed the stolen data and concluded in 2013 that 99.8% of their citizens on the list were probably evading tax.

The thousands of pages of data were obtained by the French newspaper Le Monde. In a joint investigation, the documents have now been passed to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, theGuardian newspaper, Panorama and more than 50 media outlets around the world.

The documents include details of almost 7,000 British clients - and many of the accounts were not declared to the taxman.

HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) was given the leaked data in 2010 and has identified 1,100 people who had not paid their taxes. But almost five years later, only one tax evader has been prosecuted.

HMRC said £135m in tax, interest and penalties have now been paid by those who hid their assets in Switzerland.

But the chairwoman of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge MP, said: "I just don't think the tax authorities have been strong enough, assertive enough, brave enough, tough enough in securing for the British taxpayer the monies that are due."

HSBC did not just turn a blind eye to tax evaders - in some cases it broke the law by actively helping its clients.

The bank gave one wealthy family a foreign credit card so they could withdraw their undeclared cash at cashpoints overseas.

HSBC also helped its tax-dodging clients stay ahead of the law.

When the European Savings Directive was introduced in 2005, the idea was that Swiss banks would take any tax owed from undeclared accounts and pass it to the taxman.

It was a tax designed to catch tax evaders. But instead of simply collecting the money, HSBC wrote to customers and offered them ways to get round the new tax.

HSBC denies that all these account holders were evading tax.

Richard Brooks, a former tax inspector and author of The Great Tax Robbery, said: "I think they were a tax avoidance and tax evasion service. I think that's what they were offering. They knew full well that people come to them to dodge their tax liabilities."

The bank now faces criminal investigations in the US, France, Belgium and Argentina. HSBC said it is "co-operating with relevant authorities". But in the UK, where the bank is based, no such action has been taken.

The man in charge of HSBC at the time, Stephen Green, was made a Conservative peer and appointed to the government.

Lord Green was made a minister eight months after HMRC had been given the leaked documents from his bank. He served as a minister of trade and investment until 2013.

He told Panorama: "As a matter of principle I will not comment on the business of HSBC past or present."

Treasury minister David Gauke defended Lord Green's appointment on BBC's Radio 4. "I am not aware of any evidence that suggests that Lord Green was involved in this sort of activity", but said he did not know whether anyone asked him about HSBC prior to his government appointment.

But Ms Hodge said: "Either he didn't know and he was asleep at the wheel, or he did know and he was therefore involved in dodgy tax practices.

"Either way he was the man in charge and I think he has got really important questions to answer."

Meanwhile, HSBC said it has completely overhauled its private banking business and has reduced the number of Swiss accounts by almost 70% since 2007.

In a statement, the bank said: "HSBC has implemented numerous initiatives designed to prevent its banking services being used to evade taxes or launder money."

The bank said it now puts compliance and tax transparency ahead of profitability.

But Panorama has spoken to a whistleblower who said there were still problems with tax dodging at HSBC private bank when she worked there in 2013.

Sue Shelley was the private bank's head of compliance in Luxembourg. She said HSBC did not keep its promise to change. "I think the verbal messages were great but they weren't put into practice and that disturbed me greatly," she said.

It was her job to make sure HSBC followed the rules, but she said she was sacked after raising concerns. She has since won a tribunal hearing for unfair dismissal.

The revelations have also caused a political row.

Mr Gauke has urged Ed Balls, City minister in 2007, to make a statement about the last Labour government's handling of tax evasion.

"It is for the City Minister in [the] years up to 2007, Ed Balls, to make an urgent statement about what he knew about all this and why the then government allowed tax avoidance and evasion to take place on such a scale.

Since 2010 we have closed many of the loopholes exposed in this report and specifically taken action to get back money lost in Swiss Bank Accounts."

But Labour's Rachel Reeves, shadow work and pensions secretary, defended the Labour party against accusations of inaction against tax evasion when it was in power.

"This behaviour by HSBC wasn't unearthed until 2010 so it's not something Ed Balls [City minister in 2007] or the last government could have done anything about," she told Radio 5.

Bangladesh Bank Governor Atiur Rahman has been honoured with the Central Bank Governor of the Year-Asia Pacific, 2015 award by the Banker magazine.

The Banker magazine is owned by London-based Financial Times. Brian Caplen, chief editor of the Banker, presented the award at a ceremony in the House of Lords on Friday.

Rahman was given the award for his contribution to promoting socially and environmentally responsible financing in Bangladesh without compromising macroeconomic stability, BB said in a press release quoting The Banker.

“Rahman, through his pioneering work, has managed to include farmers in the formal financial system, who previously had limited or no access to the financial market,” said Lord Mohamed Sheikh who chaired the award ceremony. Sheikh also applauded the gains made by the Bangladesh economy where Governor Rahman played a strategic role.                                                         

“What impressed the editors with Rahman's performance was not only what we expect from a central bank governor such as controlling inflation and ensuring stable economic conditions, but also his unique and interesting ideas which contributed to social good in Bangladesh,” Caplen said.

Rushanara Ali, a Bangladesh-origin British lawmaker, and Md Abdul Hannan, Bangladesh's high commissioner to the UK, also spoke on the occasion.

In November last year, Rahman received the 'GUSI Peace Prize International 2014' in recognition of his work in establishing peace by reducing poverty in Bangladesh.

Default loans in the four state-owned banks dropped 12.77 percent in 2014 from a year ago on the back of a strong recovery drive.

On December 31 last year, the default loans of Sonali, Janata, Agrani and Rupali collectively stood at Tk 16,599 crore. On an individual level too, the default loans declined in all four banks.

Besides cash recovery drives, wholesale rescheduling and write-offs also helped in bringing down the bad loans in the four banks, said an official of Sonali, the largest state bank.

Sonali, whose bad loans dropped 20.25 percent last year, gave all its branches targets for recovery and business development at the beginning of 2014, which were then monitored during the course of the year, said its Managing Director Pradip Kumar Dutta.

Subsequently, the bank counted profits of Tk 855 crore last year, which is more than a three-fold increase over previous year. In 2013, Sonali's profits stood at Tk 257 crore.

However, Sonali also wrote off around Tk 2,000 crore in 2014, which was another reason for the fall in its default loans.

Agrani Bank also recovered a handsome amount of loans last year: it made cash recovery of Tk 445 crore and around Tk 40 crore from the written-off loans. As a result, its profits increased 8.40 percent last year from the previous year.

An official of Janata Bank said in 2014 they made cash recovery of Tk 734 crore from classified loans and Tk 151 crore from written-off loans. Janata's profits though dropped 13.12 percent year-on-year to Tk 1,053 crore.

Meanwhile, Banking Secretary M Aslam Alam at a press briefing yesterday said besides classified loans, the overall loan situation of the banking sector has improved much.

Bangladesh Bank yesterday asked all banks and financial institutions to set up separate units at their head offices to serve women entrepreneurs effectively.

The banks face a 15-day deadline to form the new units, according to a notice issued by the central bank.

The BB advised the banks and financial institutions to deploy women officials at these units on a priority basis.

The central bank has taken lots of initiatives since 2010 to develop small businesses and women entrepreneurship in

the country. It created a separate department, SME and Special Programmes Department.