Parliament: Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith on Tuesday brushed aside recent media reports on siphoning off huge money to Swiss Bank from Bangladesh saying the reports were not realistic and based of facts.

Making a statement under the Rule 300 of the Rules of Procedure of the House, the minister said it cannot be denied that there is no incident of money laundering, but the amount involved with the matter is not significant. 

He said the total deposit of Bangladesh nationals with the Swiss Bank in 2015 was $582.43 million. 

The minister said considering significance of the issue, Bangladesh Bank and Bangladesh Finance Intelligence Unit gathered additional information and submitted a report to the finance ministry after analyzing the information.

He said Bangladesh and Switzerland maintain bilateral relations and trade volume between the two countries is increasing gradually. 

He said the trade and business between the two countries are continuing through various banks in Switzerland and the Swiss banks have assets amounting to Taka 1,823 crore under the head of Bangladesh in 2016 while the liabilities during the same period was Taka 5,560 crore. 

"Switzerland's banking system is highly developed. So, our business transactions and settlements with different countries are managed through the Swiss banks. According to the full report of 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2016, we have found that many transactions have been made through Switzerland," Muhith said. 

According the exchange rate 1Swiss Franc is equivalent to Taka 84. The amount of Bangladesh's debt in 2015 is less than 20 percent compared to the debt this year, the minister added. 

Another interesting fact is that the amount of debt and payments between our banks and Switzerland banks are very high, which is very little compared to the total deposit or debt than the individual's deposit or debt. 

"In reality, this is not a money laundering. I believe that this explanation will remove many of our misunderstandings. As such, there are many Bangladeshi citizens in the private sector who work abroad or stay permanently. They are also included in the account. We cannot calculate that. Because, we do not know the number of Bangladeshis who have used their passports as an identity cards. It proved that the matter of money laundering is not a serious issue. There have been seen some money laundering, but it is not significant, it is very normal," he said.