Photo: BanglaFact

DHAKA, Sept 10, 2026 (BSS) – Fact checking body BanglaFact has debunked that independent lawmaker Rumeen Farhana made two major misleading claims in her speech during the Wednesday’s session of the Jatiya Sangsad.

The fact-checking watchdog of Press Institute Bangladesh (PIB) published a detailed analysis about the remarks of lawmaker Farhana on its website today.  

According to the report, Farhana in her speech said, “Every government has a certain character. It cannot be that the BNP comes to power and there will be no gas or electricity crisis. It cannot be that the BNP comes to power and there will be no fertilizer crisis, that poor farmers will not loot fertilizer. It cannot be that the BNP comes to power and Bangladesh will not become the champion in corruption. It is also impossible that the BNP comes to power and Bangladesh will not achieve the highest position in loan defaulting for the first time. So, the BNP coming to power means becoming the highest in loan defaults.”

The fact-checking body explained the actual context behind Bangladesh’s labeling the world champion in corruption in 2001.

According to the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) of the Berlin-based organization Transparency International (TI), Bangladesh ranked at the bottom of the list (meaning it was perceived as the most corrupt country) for five consecutive years, from 2001 to 2005. 

Politically, this is often portrayed as the responsibility of the BNP-Jamaat coalition government of 2001–2006.

However, an analysis of TI’s methodology for compiling the index shows that when Bangladesh first appeared at the bottom of the list in 2001, the index had been prepared based on corruption-related data from the preceding three years (1998–2000). 

During that entire period, the country was governed by the then Awami League government. Therefore, the primary responsibility for Bangladesh becoming the “world champion” for the first time in 2001 lay with the Awami League government of that period.

After the BNP came to power in October 2001, Bangladesh’s score was 0.4. 

A lower score indicates a higher perceived level of corruption. 

Subsequently, as a result of various institutional reforms undertaken by the government, the score increased to 1.7 in 2005 and later improved to 2.0. 

In other words, corruption declined gradually during the BNP government’s tenure. 

Moreover, the independent Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) was established in 2004 during the BNP government’s tenure, strengthening the institutional foundation for combating corruption.

Concealing the actual picture of defaulted loans

Farhana claimed that the BNP coming to power means Bangladesh will achieve the highest level of loan defaults. 

However, the banking-sector crisis and high level of defaulted loans currently being observed are rooted in the long-standing policy mismanagement of the previous Awami League government.

During the previous Awami League government’s tenure, extensive amounts of bad and nominal/benami loans were repeatedly shown as “regular” loans through special policy concessions, loan rescheduling, and accounting manipulation.

Following the July uprising, Asset Quality Reviews (AQRs) and in-depth audits by independent domestic and international institutions were conducted in a new political context. 

As a result, the true picture of fraud, defaulted loans that had been concealed through policy concessions and other irregularities that had remained hidden for years was exposed.

These are not newly created defaults under a new government; rather, they represent the uncovering of irregularities that had accumulated over a long period of time. 

BanglaFact had previously published an analysis debunking’s Farhana previously provided misleading information in Parliament.

It said “This is not the first instance in which Farhana has allegedly spread misleading information in Parliament.”

Previously, she claimed that 62,000 people had lost their jobs and more than 900 factories had shut down within the first six months after the current government came to power.

A previous investigation by BanglaFact found that this information was also inaccurate. 

The factory closures and job losses in question had occurred during the tenure of the interim government, and the actual number of factories that had shut down during that period was 95—not more than 900.