NBR Freezes Over 100 Bank Accounts Tied to Garment Unrest Financing, Scrutinises 125 Companies

The National Board of Revenue has ordered banks to freeze the accounts of more than 100 individuals and has begun combing through the transaction histories of roughly 125 companies, accusing politically connected businesspeople of financing the unrest that has shut hundreds of garment factories over the past two weeks. It is the government's clearest move yet to follow the money behind the protests rather than just the protests themselves.

• More than 100 individuals have had bank accounts frozen, and about 125 companies are having their transaction records scrutinised.
• The order came through two NBR intelligence wings, the Central Intelligence Cell and the Income Tax Intelligence and Investigation Unit.
• Named individuals include Salman F Rahman of Beximco Group, Abdus Salam Murshedy of Envoy Group, and former BGMEA president SM Mannan Kochi, most of them tied to the Awami League government ousted in 2024.
• The move follows roughly 370 garment factories suspending production amid the wage unrest, and arrives alongside a prime ministerial warning against those seeking to destroy mills and factories.

What the NBR has ordered

According to an NBR official who spoke on condition of anonymity, the board has asked banks and financial institutions to trace and freeze the accounts of more than 100 individuals, acting on information passed along by other government agencies. Separately, the NBR has sought the transaction histories of close to 125 companies. Family members of some of the named individuals are also included in the account freeze, a detail that signals the investigation is looking at household wealth, not just individual signatories.

"We are working according to our higher authorities' directions," the official told reporters, declining to be named.

Who is on the list

The individuals named publicly so far read like a roster of the previous government's business and political establishment. Most are reported to be either in jail or absconding.

Name	Affiliation
Salman F Rahman	Former adviser to the prime minister; owner, Beximco Group
Tipu Munshi	Former commerce minister
Abdus Salam Murshedy	Former lawmaker; owner, Envoy Group
Shahriar Alam	Former state minister for foreign affairs
Nasrul Hamid	Former state minister for power and energy
Tajul Islam	Former local government minister
Abdus Salam	Well Group
Khasru Chowdhury	Nipa Group
AKM Mosharraf Hossain	Standard Group
Faizur Rahman	Tusuka Group
SM Mannan Kochi	Former BGMEA president

Why now: the unrest behind the enforcement

The crackdown lands in the middle of the worst garment labour unrest in years. Roughly 370 factories have suspended production as workers pressed for a higher minimum wage, with some protests turning violent and clashing with police. The government has publicly accused unnamed plotters of trying to destabilise the industry and has warned it would respond as it did to factory destruction in 2024. The NBR's financial inquiry is the economic enforcement arm of that same message: officials are trying to show they can trace and choke off funding for unrest, not just police the streets.

What is missing from the picture

For all its specificity about names and numbers, the NBR action is light on process detail. No law or court order has been cited publicly as the legal basis for the freezes, no timeline has been given for how long the inquiry will run, and none of the named individuals, their companies, or BGMEA have issued a public response so far. Whether the frozen accounts yield evidence of actual unrest financing, or whether this becomes another unresolved thread in Bangladesh's broader pursuit of assets tied to the former government, will depend on disclosures the NBR has not yet made.

What it means for you

If you have no connection to the garment sector's ownership class, this action will not touch your bank account, but it is still worth watching if you work in or near the ready made garment industry, since enforcement actions against factory owners can ripple into payrolls, supplier payments and order fulfilment at affected firms. Business owners who bank with institutions now fielding NBR requests may notice slower processing on unrelated transactions simply because compliance teams are busy. For everyone else, this is primarily a story about how the state is trying to separate labour unrest from the money some allege is funding it, a distinction that matters for how the wage dispute itself eventually gets resolved.

What to watch next

The real test will be whether the NBR publishes findings, presses charges, or quietly unfreezes most of these accounts once the political heat fades, a pattern Bangladesh has seen before with asset freezes tied to the 2024 transition. Workers and factory owners alike have more immediate stakes in whether the wage board's recommendations hold and whether suspended factories reopen, questions this financial inquiry does not directly answer.