Lessons from Bangladesh

By winning the Bangladesh elections with a mammoth majority, the Bangladesh Awami League (BAL) under the leadership of Sheikh Hasina has proved that common people want development, and are fed up with corruption and fundamentalist politics. The main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), performed very poorly and could not even reach the double-digit winning figure. The leader of the BNP, Khaleda Zia is still in jail on charges of corruption. She served as the Prime Minister of Bangladesh from 1991 to 1996, and again from 2001 to 2006. During her regime, corruption levels were high, and her second son, Arafat Rahman Koko, at the helm of affairs. In this regard, Bangladesh Live News reported on 11 June 2018 that

In 2008 it was revealed that Siemens, a German telecom and IT giant, agreed to pay US $1.6 billion fine to the US [United States] and German governments to settle a number of bribery charges. Out of this amount, Siemens Bangladesh would pay US $500,000 to the US government to settle charges that in 2004 it bribed Arafat Rahman Koko, second son of then Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. In what appears to be another sensational revelation at around this time, the Singapore government announced its decision to freeze assets amounting to Tk 11,66,00,000 [Bangladeshi currency known as Taka] belonging to Arafat Rahman Koko.