Bangladesh Information and Broadcasting Minister Dr Hasan Mahmud discredited the findings of a recent research published by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) that stated over TK92,000 crore was embezzled through 24 banking scams in 15 years, claiming they had not conducted genuine research.

"They just made a report based on some newspaper cuttings and held a press conference. Their statements are nothing but blatant lies," he said, while talking to reporters at BTV Chattogram center on Monday December 25.

"Although the CPD press conference talked about research, in reality it takes a lot of time to do research, a lot of information is needed. But the CPD has done a lot of concealment in preparing and publishing this report and they have presented many wrong information," said the Joint General Secretary of Bangladesh Awami League.

Giving an example, he also said, "CPD said 75 percent of our development budget is dependent on foreign countries. But in fact, 35 percent of our current budget is aid or foreign country dependent. At one point, it dropped below 20 percent. This has risen to 35 per cent in recent times due to some projects. But CPD said it is 75 percent."

About the loan scam at BASIC bank, he said, "Out of Tk 4,000 crore, Tk 2,000 crore has already been recovered and cases have been filed for the remaining Tk 2,000 crore."

"The CPD also said that Nabil Group took a loan of Tk 2,700 crore. But the CPD report did not say that the loans were recovered. They were deliberately hidden. CPD talked about a Chattogram-based group. I checked with Bangladesh Bank. None of the loans in that group are classified. That is, CPD has given false information," he said.

"At the same time, the CPD said the size of classified loans has increased. But they only talked about size, not percentage. Because the percentage of classified loans has decreased. In 2009, our GDP was $80 billion. Now the GDP is about $500 billion or 0.5 trillion dollars.

If the GDP increases 6 times, it is normal that the size of classified or bad loans will also increase. But what is the percentage, that is the main thing. In 2009, the classified loan was 10.5 percent, and now it is 9.93 percent," said the minister.