/ SS Power Plant: S Alam nexus laundered $815m through two LCs

Two LCs, 184 fake invoices, and the money was gone.
This is how SS Power Limited, a concern of S Alam Group, laundered $815.78 million (around Tk 10,000 crore) from Bangladesh between 2019 and 2023, draining the country’s hard-earned dollars.
SS Power opened the LCs to import capital machinery for its Chattogram-based 1320MW coal-based plant, but even a single item did not enter Bangladesh against these LCs. And yet the money crossed the border as monitoring by the authorities took back seat.

Both LCs were opened at state-run Rupali Bank, and the Bangladesh Bank transferred the amount to SS Power’s Chinese partner SEPCO based on documents, including fake invoices, furnished by Rupali Bank, an investigation by The Daily Star has found.
Large-scale capital flight has been reported in Bangladesh media over the last 15 years, but this is for the first time that a newspaper has followed the paper trails and gathered documentary evidence of money laundering using LCs as a cover.

The documents SS Power used to siphon off the money include invoices related to previous imports by other companies, invalid invoices bearing future dates of 2025, unrelated Import Permissions (IPs) and even EXPORT – not import – documents.
SS Power’s Chief Financial Officer Ebadath Hossain Bhuiyan denied that any money has gone out of Bangladesh against these two LCs.
“These import payments were made through loans from our Chinese partner [SEPCO],” he told The Daily Star by phone on September 23, and advised us to talk to the Rupali Bank authorities.

Abu Naser Mohammad Masud, General Manager of Rupali Bank’s Motijheel branch, confirmed that no loan money was involved in making the payments. “The total value of the two LCs was $914 million. Of this, payments worth $815.78 million were cleared from Bangladesh,” he told this newspaper at his office on Tuesday.
In 2016, now-deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina and Chinese President Xi Jinping jointly inaugurated the 1320MW power plant in the port city’s Banshkhali. Beijing provided $2.6 billion (75%) of the fund in loan to build the plant, a joint venture by S Alam’s SS Power and SEPCO. The plant started partial production in 2023, according to media reports.
The two LCs in question were opened under duty-free benefits to import vital machinery such as boiler structure, generator, transformer, steel structure and reheater systems for this project. But documents show the LCs were used instead as a cover to steal dollars from Bangladesh and stash them in some other countries.

The first LC (LC no. 0000026319150005) worth $121.95 million was opened on January 29, 2019, at Rupali Bank’s local branch in Motijheel, Dhaka.
The first invoice (873670) claiming $371,873 against this LC was recorded on the BB server on May 27, 2019, and the last invoice (230261) claiming another $576,569 on February 3, 2023. In between, $120,498,430 more were transferred to the account of SEPCO Electric Power Construction Corporation, the Chinese partner of SS Power, documents from Bangladesh Bank and National Board of Revenue show.

The second LC (0000026321150038), dated May 30, 2021, also involved imports of capital machinery worth $792.40 million. This LC was also opened at the same Rupali Bank branch.

Between June 15, 2021, and December 30, 2022, $698.33 million were taken out of the country against this LC using fake Bills of Entry.
Nearly $99.58 million of the $914 million value of the two LCs remains unspent, documents show.
SEPCO did not respond to our email seeking comments. The phone numbers of the company’s two representatives in Bangladesh were found switched off over the last three days.
One hundred eighty-four fake invoices – 59 for the first LC and 125 for the second LC – were uploaded on the BB server to launder the $815.78 million.

The Daily Star verified each of these invoices with the NBR server, and found they were not related to the two LCs opened by SS power for the import of capital machinery.
“There is no import data on our server against these two LCs,” Mohammad Fyzur Rahman, who was Chattogram Custom House Commissioner until recently, told The Daily Star last month. [He is currently a commissioner at Customs Excise and VAT Commissionerate, Dhaka (North)].
So how did the money fly out of Bangladesh? The answer lies with Rupali Bank.
When any import and export data are uploaded on the NBR server, the data get posted on the Bangladesh Bank server automatically. In this case, however, NBR did not upload any import data because there was no import. Still, all these 184 invoices made their way into the BB server.
“Usually, customs officials upload import data on the NBR server. However, the banks concerned can also upload this data after collecting the information from the importer,” said an official at the Foreign Exchange Operation Department of Bangladesh Bank.
In this case, the details of these invoices were uploaded by the respective branch of Rupali Bank, he said on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the media.
“This cannot be done without the involvement of some top officials of the bank concerned,” he said.
As a standard practice, the central bank clears LC payments upon confirmation from the importer’s bank that the import process has been completed and the import value has been deposited in the bank in local currency. This can be done online.

Documents show that the information required for the central bank to clear the dollar payment in favour of the Chinese company were uploaded on Bangladesh Bank server by Rupali Bank. This includes the 184 fake invoices.

NBR data show 88 of the 184 invoices are linked to 50 companies unrelated to SS Power and SEPCO joint venture. The LC numbers, import dates and the exporting companies recorded on the NBR server against these fake invoices also do not match with the corresponding data uploaded on the BB server.
At least one of these invoices even bears a future date – November 29, 2025 – and at least 30 are related to EXPORTS – not import – by different companies that have no links with SS Power.

The remaining 96 invoices do relate to SS Power, but these products were imported using at least seven different Import Permissions (IPs) and have no connections with these two LCs.

Usually, the commerce ministry issues IPs for imports against foreign loan agreements or back-to-back LCs.
The Daily Star has copies of two of these seven IPs, granted under four conditions.

“No foreign currency can be spent from Bangladesh end for this particular import,” reads the first condition.
This means that even if these 96 invoices against the seven IPs were genuine – and they were not – SS Power violated the IP conditions.

The Daily Star shared its findings and some related documents with Bangladesh Bank Executive Director and Spokesperson Husne Ara Shikha.
“We will verify the information and speak with the relevant authorities, including the bank concerned. We cannot make any comment before this,” she said.