Justice, corruption and the rule of law

More complaints and investigations can show greater access or more active enforcement, but they do not establish that justice is faster or assets are recovered. The next test is what happens after a case enters the system. Court capacity, due process and transparent accounts of realised recoveries should sit alongside intake statistics.

Complaints, courts and asset recovery

The perception record is a decade of stalemate at a low level. The Corruption Perceptions Index score ran 26 of 100 in 2012, touched 28 in 2017 and ended at 23 in 2024, the lowest reading held here [TI CPI 2024, owid corruption-perception-index]. The Worldwide Governance Indicators place control of corruption at the 25.5th percentile for 2024 against 27.2 in 2010, and rule of law at the 40.4th percentile against 42.4 in 2010 [WB WGI 2024]. The World Justice Project Rule of Law Index scored the country 0.42 in 2015, rank 92 of 102, and 0.39 in 2024, rank 127 of 142 [WJP 2024].

The V-Dem indices that measure the courts directly tell the sharper story: judicial constraints on the executive fell from 0.211 in 2010 to 0.125 in 2022, and the judicial corruption decision index, which runs from plus 4 for judges who always decide impartially to minus 4 for judges who almost never do, fell from minus 1.72 in 2010 to minus 2.33 in 2022, the worst reading held here [VDem 2022].

The experience record moved the other way, which is the paradox chapter 47 documents. The Enterprise Surveys record bribery incidence falling from 60.35 percent of firms in 2007 to 47.70 percent in 2013 and 22.99 percent in 2022, and informal payments to public officials from 85.08 to 30.68 percent across the same waves [WB ES 2022]. Petty corruption at the counter collapsed while the perception indices stood still because the system migrated to the balance sheet: the connected lending that chapter 06 prices at a 30.6 percent measured classified loan ratio [BB NPL 2026] never passed a complaint counter.

The enforcement record is now the best documented part of the system, and the 2024 annual report carries the full pipeline. Complaints received ran 18,489 in 2020, 14,789 in 2021, 19,338 in 2022, 15,437 in 2023 and 15,842 in 2024; enquiries initiated ran 822, 533, 901, 845 and 1,894 across the same years; cases filed ran 348, 347, 406, 404 and 451; charge sheets approved ran 228, 260, 224, 363 and 403 [ACC 2025]. The 2024 report shows what the filter does: of 15,842 complaints, 12,936, or 81.7 percent, were dismissed at scrutiny, 1,894, or 12.0 percent, were approved for enquiry, and 1,012 were forwarded to ministries for departmental action [ACC 2025]. The enquiry docket at the end of 2024 held 4,285 enquiries, 3,083 carried over and 1,202 new; the Commission completed 861, filed 451 cases, terminated 318 and disposed of 156 by other means [ACC 2025].

The court record is where the data thins. No current case backlog series exists in the source archive: the Law and Justice Division annual reports held here stop at FY2015 [LJD 2015], and any figure for pending cases in the 2020s, of the kind commonly quoted in the millions, could not be confirmed, with the Law and Justice Division and the Supreme Court as resolving sources. What the system does hold is a constant measurement of commercial justice: enforcing a contract through the Dhaka courts took 1,442 days and cost 66.8 percent of the claim value in every Doing Business round from 2004 to 2020, a series that never once recorded an improvement, with a quality of judicial processes index of 7.5 of 18 in the last editions held [WB DB 2020].

The successor assessment scores Bangladesh's dispute resolution at 45.81 of 100 against a ten topic average of 51.97 [WB BREADY 2025]. The one deep court docket in the record available to this chapter is the anti-corruption one: at the end of 2024 the Special Judge's Courts held 3,410 cases, 3,066 of them the Commission's own and 344 inherited from the defunct Anti-Corruption Bureau, 2,988 under trial, and disposed of 295 in the year, 99 inside Dhaka and 196 outside. Of the 274 Commission cases disposed, 132 ended in conviction, a 48.17 percent conviction rate, after 72 percent in 2020, 60 percent in 2021, 64.17 percent in 2022 and 67.13 percent in 2023; the 21 defunct Bureau cases convicted 6, a 28.57 percent rate, for 138 convictions across both categories [ACC 2025].

The asset and money trail is the newest record and the thinnest at the far end. Asset matters dominate the enforcement docket: 1,862 of the 4,285 running enquiries, 43.5 percent, are asset enquiries, and 940 asset investigations ran alongside them [ACC 2025]. The Commission's asset management in 2024 records attached assets of 170.55 crore BDT, including 281.17 acres of land valued at 63.29 crore BDT and 84 houses valued at 65.80 crore BDT, and frozen assets of 190.90 crore BDT, including balances of 141.42 crore BDT in 550 bank accounts [ACC 2025].

Fines imposed in 2024 reached 1,147.34 crore BDT; confiscations actually realised were 11.75 crore BDT [ACC 2025]. The financial intelligence baseline is the FY2016-17 annual report, the newest available to this chapter: 2,357 suspicious transaction and activity reports received, up 39.72 percent on the year, of which banks contributed 70.58 percent and money remitters 27.32 percent, against 13.99 million cash transaction reports worth 10,093.27 billion BDT [BFIU 2017]. Everything the financial intelligence unit has done since FY2016-17 could not be confirmed here, its current annual reports being the resolving source.

Where cases and recoveries slow down

The first mechanism is the scrutiny filter, and it is the institution chapter 12 described as calibrated to a steady state. Through a boom, a pandemic and a change of government, the Commission dismissed roughly four fifths of complaints at scrutiny and filed 347 to 406 cases a year [ACC 2024] [ACC 2025]. The intake change of 2024 is the transition's signature inside the series: enquiries initiated more than doubled to 1,894 [ACC 2025], the first break in five years of a 533 to 901 range, while complaints received barely moved.

The filter's composition also moved. Trap cases, the instrument against demand side bribery at the counter, fell from 18 investigations in 2020 to zero in 2024 [ACC 2025], while asset enquiries grew to 43.5 percent of the docket. An enforcement machine that abandons the trap case at the counter and concentrates on the unexplained mansion has, in effect, accepted chapter 47's finding that the system ran on the balance sheet, not on small payments; the enforcement unit's 281 operations and 528 targeted recommendations to departments in 2024 [ACC 2025] are the systemic half of the same reorientation.

The second mechanism is the court bottleneck, and it works through duration. A commercial dispute takes 1,442 days to trial and 66.8 percent of the claim in cost [WB DB 2020], which means formal justice is a service priced for insiders who can wait and a signal to everyone else to settle outside it; the enterprise survey's falling bribery incidence is partly the record of transactions that no longer expect anything from a court. The same slowness taxes prosecution. Of the 3,410 case docket, 2,988 cases sat under trial at the end of 2024 and 295 were disposed of in the year [ACC 2025], and the conviction rate fell from 67.13 percent to 48.17 percent in the year intake rose [ACC 2025].

The mechanism is mechanical: witness availability, evidence ageing and procedural challenge compound over years, so a bigger intake into a fixed court capacity converts to acquittals later. The category detail confirms it: asset cases convicted 24 of 46 disposed, money laundering cases 9 of 15, trap cases 5 of 14 [ACC 2025], and the courts outside Dhaka, which disposed of 196 cases and convicted in 88, carry the heavier share of trial work than the 99 disposed inside Dhaka [ACC 2025]. A transition docket that enters this system faster than courts absorb it is being scheduled for acquittal years ahead.

The third mechanism is the asset pipeline, which is information rich and money poor. The Commission built the systemry of asset recovery: an Asset Management Unit since 2019, Criminal Asset Management Guidelines since 2020, court appointment of the Commission as receiver of attached property, and in 2024 records of 361.45 crore BDT in attached and frozen assets at home, alongside 244 flats, 20 plots and 79 apartments abroad whose values are not stated, and 4 foreign bank accounts holding 200,206.72 US dollars [ACC 2025]. What the pipeline does not yet do is collect: confiscations realised in 2024 were 11.75 crore BDT against 1,147.34 crore BDT in fines imposed, roughly a hundredth, and the fines themselves are 7.5 times the Commission's FY24 revised budget of 153.74 crore BDT [ACC 2025].

The money laundering jurisdiction is split the same way: the Commission investigates laundering only where bribery and corruption are the predicate offence under the Money Laundering Prevention Act 2012, and the other 26 predicate offences sit with agencies including the NBR and the CID [ACC 2025]. The reporting infrastructure underneath is the one component that scaled: the financial intelligence unit's baseline year already logged 2,357 suspicious transaction and activity reports and 13.99 million cash transaction reports worth 10,093.27 billion BDT [BFIU 2017], and its Central and Regional Task Force for Preventing Illegal Hundi Activities is the standing hundi enforcement mechanism the system holds [BFIU 2017].

Chapter 21's finding stands and deepens: the hundi channel's price, the exchange rate wedge the 2024 to 2025 float removed, did more to move the flows than a decade of task forces, and the intelligence apparatus built against it has never published an enforcement outcome in any source available to this chapter, which is why the record since FY2016-17 could not be confirmed.

The fourth mechanism is the audit settlement gap, chapter 12's mechanism continued on newer files. In FY22 the audit office reported 10,537.28 crore BDT involved in recoverable findings against 642.36 crore BDT settled through parliamentary committee action [CAG 2022]. The 2023 files show the same shape inside the year: ten Public Accounts Committee meetings between January and August 2023 discussed 381 audit observations [CAG 2023], and in the FY23 cycle of the foreign aided projects audit directorate, 405 audit observations were settled with about 535 crore BDT deposited into the treasury while about 33,009 crore BDT were settled by producing documents [CAG 2023]. Across the audit chain and the anti-corruption chain alike, the system works to the point of detection and the point of paper settlement, and loses the money at the point of collection.

Decisions on courts and enforcement

The first clock is the transition docket, and its owner is the elected state sitting since early 2026, which controls Special Judge capacity, prosecutorial appointments and the Commission's budget, 153.74 crore BDT revised in FY24 [ACC 2025]. The 2024 intake, 1,894 enquiries and 502 new asset enquiries [ACC 2025], becomes cases at a lag and verdicts at a longer one; the 451 cases filed in 2024 [ACC 2025] enter courts already holding 2,988 under trial cases. If disposals stay near 295 a year, the transition's enforcement ends in acquittals in the early 2030s no matter what the enquiry counter does; the number of Special Judge's Courts in operation could not be confirmed from the cited reports, the Law and Justice Division being the resolving source, which makes it the first number a serious decade plan would publish.

The asset side runs on its own clock: the frozen 141.42 crore BDT in bank accounts [ACC 2025] decays in real terms while litigation runs, and the Asset Management Unit's conversion of information into receipts is the decade's test of whether the 2024 paper becomes treasury deposits.

The second clock is the procurement rulebook, the best documented institutional inheritance of the transition. The Public Procurement (Amendment) Ordinance 2025, Ordinance No. 16 of 2025, gazetted 4 May 2025, and the Public Procurement Rules 2025 took effect together on 28 September 2025, with 154 rules and 21 schedules: mandatory e-GP for all public procurement, mandatory disclosure of the actual beneficial owner of contract awards, a Debarment Board, removal of the plus or minus 10 percent price cap in national works procurement, and formal introduction of sustainable public procurement [BPPA 2025].

Chapter 47 carries the ratification arithmetic: an ordinance government wrote these rules and the thirteenth parliament must convert them into acts, and the e-GP share of procurement value could not be confirmed from the cited reports, the Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority portal being the resolving source. For this chapter the point is sharper: procurement is where the state meets the business politics nexus chapter 47 documents, beneficial ownership disclosure and the debarment board are the two instruments that reach it, and both are rules on paper until a first debarment and a first disclosed owner appear in the record.

The third clock is the external audit calendar. The GSP+ package chapter 02 prices requires effective implementation of conventions that include judicial independence and anti-corruption instruments, audited on a two year monitoring cycle against the EBA window that the transition timetable targets closing at the end of 2029 [EU GSP 2023]. The World Bank's Business Ready assessment scored dispute resolution at 45.81 of 100 in its 2025 edition [WB BREADY 2025], the baseline the next wave measures against. The scenario settings this chapter hands to chapter 15: the reform scenario assumes the enquiry intake holds above the 1,500 a year level through the electoral cycle, Special Judge disposals more than double, and confiscations move from 11.75 crore BDT to above 100 crore BDT a year; the baseline assumes intake normalises toward the old band and the docket ages slowly; the stall scenario assumes the enforcement window closes, the transition cases are abandoned or settled, and the WJP and V-Dem judicial series resume their 2010 to 2022 slope [WJP 2024] [VDem 2022].

How to test the argument. The justice authorities and Anti-Corruption Commission should track cohorts from investigation through judgment and realised recovery, with due process safeguards. If intake rises while unresolved cases and settlement delays grow, activity counts would weaken rather than establish the claim of effective enforcement.

Risks and opportunities

Risks. First, enforcement reversal: the intake window of 2024 was an artefact of a change of government, and monitor the enquiry series, at 1,894 in 2024 [ACC 2025], falling back under the 900 level of 2020 to 2023 while the new incumbency's own docket stays unexamined. Second, the jam: transition era cases age in courts that dispose of 295 corruption cases a year [ACC 2025], conviction rates settle below 40 percent as evidence goes stale, and the decade's enforcement output is a library of acquittals; monitor the conviction rate against the 48.17 percent of 2024 [ACC 2025]. Third, paper reform: e-GP mandatory on paper with beneficial ownership undeclared in practice, the debarment board unused, and the procurement rules surviving as acts while the price evaluation behaviour returns; monitor the first debarment decision and the first disclosed beneficial owner in an award [BPPA 2025].

Upside. First, an institutionalised funnel: if the 1,894 enquiry intake and the asset docket's 43.5 percent share persist through a change of government, enforcement becomes a service the state provides rather than a weapon an incumbency holds, and monitor the intake series holding above 1,500 in the first annual report of the elected period. Second, real recoveries: the systemry exists, Asset Management Unit, guidelines, receiver appointments, 361.45 crore BDT attached and frozen [ACC 2025], and a court system that converts frozen balances into confiscated receipts at above 100 crore BDT a year would change the economics of stealing, with the revealing indicator in the annual report's confiscation line against the 11.75 crore BDT of 2024 [ACC 2025].

Third, commercial justice as an investment lever: contract enforcement at 1,442 days [WB DB 2020] is a tax on every formal firm and a subsidy to connected ones, so a dispute resolution score moving from 45.81 toward the 55 threshold in the next Business Ready wave [WB BREADY 2025] would pay a dividend across chapters 07 and 14 wider than any anti-corruption campaign.

Justice indicators to follow

The benchmarks below are author-proposed monitoring points, not validated causal cutoffs or official forecasts.

1. Anti-Corruption Commission enquiries initiated. Current value 1,894 in 2024 against a 2020 to 2023 range of 533 to 901 [ACC 2025]. Proposed benchmark: intake holding above 1,500 a year through the elected government's first term is the institutionalised widening; a fall back under 900 is the steady state of the pre transition machine restored.
2. Special Judge's Court disposals. Current value 295 a year against a docket of 3,410, about 11.6 years of work at that rate [ACC 2025]. Proposed benchmark: disposals above 600 a year would reduce the inherited backlog faster, but clearance time also depends on new filings and case complexity; disposals below 250 with the docket above 3,500 confirm the jam regime.
3. Confiscations realised. Current value 11.75 crore BDT in 2024 against 1,147.34 crore BDT in fines imposed [ACC 2025]. Proposed benchmark: confiscations above 100 crore BDT a year mean the asset pipeline collects; a fines line that grows while confiscations stay under 20 crore BDT may indicate punishment on paper.
4. Corruption Perceptions Index score. Current value 23 of 100 in the 2024 edition, the series low [TI CPI 2024, owid corruption-perception-index]. Proposed benchmark: a score of 30 or higher by the edition the 2030 calendar targets, the same threshold chapter 12 sets, is the perception regime change; a reading below 20 alongside a falling enquiry intake is the reversal confirmation.
5. Dispute resolution score. Current value 45.81 of 100 in the 2025 edition of Business Ready, against a ten topic average of 51.97 [WB BREADY 2025]. Proposed benchmark: a score above 55 in the next assessment wave is commercial justice regime change; a reading that stays below the topic average a second time may indicate the courts as the binding constraint this chapter describes.

Sources

[ACC 2024] Anti-Corruption Commission Annual Report 2023, cases filed per year 2019 to 2023, OCR text in the source archive.

[ACC 2025] Anti-Corruption Commission Annual Report 2024, complaint, enquiry, investigation, prosecution, conviction, fine, confiscation and asset management statistics for calendar 2024, and the Commission's FY24 budget, OCR text in the source archive.

[BFIU 2017] Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit Annual Report FY2016-17, STR, SAR and CTR statistics, hundi task force, OCR text in the source archive.

[BPPA 2025] Bangladesh Public Procurement Authority quarterly newsletter October to December 2025, Public Procurement (Amendment) Ordinance 2025 and Public Procurement Rules 2025 effective 28 September 2025, OCR text in the source archive.

[BB NPL 2026] Bangladesh Bank classified loan indicator snapshot, referenced for the 30.6 percent measured classified loan ratio, detailed in chapter 06.

[CAG 2022] Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General, Annual Activity Report FY22, audit recovery and parliamentary committee settlement figures, OCR text in the source archive.

[CAG 2023] CAG News January to August 2023 and September to December 2023, Public Accounts Committee meeting counts, audit observations discussed, and foreign aided projects audit directorate settlement figures for the FY2022-23 cycle, OCR text in the source archive.

[EU GSP 2023] European Commission GSP regulation and EBA transition timetable, referenced from chapters 02 and 12.

[LJD 2015] Law and Justice Division annual reports held in the source archive, ending FY2015, the resolving source for court statistics.

[TI CPI 2024] Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, Bangladesh scores 2012 to 2024, via the OWID corruption perception file in the source archive.

[VDem 2022] V-Dem Institute indices for Bangladesh through 2022, via bdpolicy parquet governance/vdem_bd, series: v2x_jucon, v2jucorrdc.

[WB BREADY 2025] World Bank Business Ready assessment 2024-2025, dispute resolution and commercial justice topic score, via bdpolicy.db, series: wb_bready2025_dispute_resolution_overall, wb_bready2025_topic_average_score.

[WB DB 2020] World Bank Doing Business 2020 and earlier rounds for Bangladesh, enforcing contracts time, cost and quality of judicial processes index, via the trade/bd_eodb parquet.

[WB ES 2022] World Bank Enterprise Surveys, Bangladesh firm level indicators for the 2007, 2013 and 2022 waves, via the finance/enterprise_survey_bd parquet, series: IC.FRM.BRIB.ZS, IC.FRM.CORR.ZS.

[WB WGI 2024] World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators, data year 2024, rule of law and control of corruption percentile ranks, via bdpolicy parquet governance/wgi_bd.

[WJP 2024] World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, Bangladesh overall score and rank 2015 to 2024, via bdpolicy parquet governance/wjp_rol_bd.