State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan on Wednesday told Parliament that Bangladesh Bank will probe the alleged siphoning off some Tk 730 billion.

“The central bank will take steps against the looting or siphoning off the money, and the government will provide all-out cooperation so that we can prevent the rise in such activities in the future,” he said.

The junior minister was replying to a supplementary question from Jatiya Party MP Pir Fazlur Rahman in the House in the absence of Finance Minister AMA Muhith, reports UNB.

Citing a newspaper report, Fazlur Rahman said some Tk 730 billion was siphoned off the country in 2014 as per the statistics of Washington-based Global Financial Integrity (GFI) and wanted to know what steps the government is taking to prevent the ill practice.

Terming the lost amount a big one, Mannan said the looting of such an amount of money is possible from only a large or growing economy.

“We are not rejecting the claim of siphoning off the money. It has come to our notice. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) of our central bank will collect information in this regard,” he said.

He also said the government must take cautionary measures to prevent such looting.

The junior minister, however, said many misleading information alongside good ones also come out in this age of free flow of information.

In reply to a starred question from Tarikat Federation MP MA Awal, Mannan, on behalf of Muhith, said over Tk 1.26 trillion revenue was collected in the first nine months of the current fiscal year, which is some Tk 210 billion higher than that of the corresponding period of the last fiscal year.

Answering to another starred question from Awami League MP Advocate Md Rahmat Ali (Gazipur-3), he said some 1.4 million people have paid income tax.

“Some Tk 390.53 billion was collected in form of income tax till March in the current fiscal year,” he said.

Responding to an unstarred question from the ruling party MP M Abdul Latif (Chittagong-11), Mannan said a good number of cases pending with the National Board of Revenue were disposed of in the six months from June 2016 to December 2016.

There were 13,910 cases, involving Tk 48.02 billion revenue, as of July 31 of 2016. But the number of cases reduced to 9,033, involving Tk 30.60 billion revenue on December 31 of 2016, he said.