The amount Bangladeshis deposited in various Swiss banks rose to an unprecedented degree last year. Bangladeshis’ deposits in Swiss banks crossed Tk 12,500 crore, the second-highest on record, with more than Tk 3,600 crore deposited in 2025 alone. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) gave the information in a report on Thursday.
It said that by 2025 the Bangladeshi money held in Swiss banks by individuals and banks had risen 41 percent to 834.2 million Swiss francs (about Tk 12,763 crore) — the second-highest ever — more than Tk 12,760 crore. One Swiss franc is now worth more than Tk 152.
The figure is also the highest in four years and a significant increase from the 590 million Swiss francs recorded in 2024.
Earlier, in 2021, the figure reached a record 871.1 million Swiss francs — the highest in the country’s history.
The Swiss National Bank’s annual report shows that in 2021, Bangladeshis’ deposits in more than a hundred Swiss banks reached 871.1 million Swiss francs. That year one Swiss franc was equal to Tk 95, putting Bangladeshis’ deposits in Swiss banks that year at about Tk 8,333 crore — the highest amount Bangladeshis had ever deposited in the country’s banks. But with last year’s jump, the total funds of Bangladeshi customers in Swiss banks now sit just below the all-time record of 871.1 million Swiss francs set in 2021.
Of Bangladeshis’ total deposits in various Swiss banks last year, 98.6 percent belonged to Bangladeshi banks, compared with 97.8 percent the previous year, in 2024 — far higher than the 20 percent of 2023 and 35 percent of 2021.
The amount deposited through individual Bangladeshi customer accounts in Swiss banks, however, fell compared with 2024. From 12.6 million Swiss francs in 2024, deposits in Bangladeshi individual customer accounts fell about 10 percent to 11.4 million Swiss francs last year.
Economists said it had been hoped that money laundering from the country would fall after the fall of the Awami League government on 5 August 2024. But these Swiss bank figures prove that money laundering has not fallen, and that this is not at all a good result for the economy. It now remains to be seen what steps the present government takes both to stop money laundering and to bring back laundered money — otherwise, they said, money laundering will not stop.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report