Bangladesh Bank has handed over the remittance award to loan defaulter and money launderer Shahjahan Bablu without scrutinising his background.

Anyone would balk at the idea of granting yet another rescheduling facility to a defaulter who has outstanding loans of Tk 1,168 crore since 1993 and has not shown any genuine interest or effort in paying back its loans. But the Rupali Bank board didn’t.

The actual size of bad loans is more than double the officially recognised figure, according to a recent report of the International Monetary Fund -- a damning evidence of the fragile state of Bangladesh’s banking sector.