IT WAS an odd job for a spy agency. On the morning of January 5th military intelligence operatives phoned the chairman, a vice-chairman and the managing director of Islami Bank Bangladesh, picked them up from their homes and brought them to the agency’s headquarters, in Dhaka’s military cantonment. Polite officers presented the bankers with letters of resignation and asked them to sign. They did so. A few hours later the bank’s board, meeting under the noses of intelligence officers at a hotel owned by the army, selected their replacements.
Islami Bank has been of interest to the government chiefly for its association with the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s biggest Islamist party. The bank is the country’s biggest (see chart), and operates in accordance with Islamic principles. Although the party only holds a minority stake in the bank, quiescent shareholders from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had allowed it to appoint the top management.
The Jamaat advocates an austere, Arabian form of Islam, which has never had much of a following in relatively liberal Bangladesh. It has never won more than 12% in a national election. It does not help that the...Continue reading
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