Bangladesh truly is unique in the sense that its government keeps granting individuals the opportunity to whiten black money, despite its questionable record of success. An amount of Tk 78 crore was whitened in the 1977-78 budget, Tk 850 crore during 1987-90, Tk 1,000 crore during 2000-01, Tk 4,403 crore during 2005-06, Tk 9,683 crore during 2007-08, Tk 1,213 crore during 2009-10, and Tk 20,600 crore in 2020-21.

Except for in 2020-21 (during Covid-19), the amount of black money that was whitened has been a drop in the ocean compared to the estimated size of our black economy.

According to a 2015 IMF report, the size of our shadow economy stood at around Tk 4,532.71 billion. A 2012 finance ministry report prepared on the underground economy estimated that black money amounted to around 45-85 percent of Bangladesh's GDP. Despite the difference in estimates, what both reports suggest is that huge sums of money are lurking in our shadow economy which are not only being generated as a result of crime and corruption, but are also being used to commit more corruption and crime. This produces an invisible cycle that is difficult to translate into monetary terms, but is devastating nonetheless in terms of the social costs that it imposes on our communities.