That is how one can best describe Dr. Moosa Bin Shamsher- often called the Prince of Princes by the global press. His dress sewn with golden thread, his buttons and cufflinks, worked with diamond, his shoes studded with diamond and rubies, he baths in rose water -a regal lifestyle indeed. A man of fabulous wealth who also likes to live it up in great style. A total perfectionist, Prince Moosa, loves the best things in life. Nobody knows for sure how he acquired his colossal wealth but many believe it is international trade that has given Prince Moosa his fabled wealth.
Dr. Moosa Bin Shamsher is a Bangladeshi business mogul who is often credited as the father of the Manpower Export industry in Bangladesh, and has also achieved notoriety for purportedly being a prominent name in the international weapons industry during the 1970s and the 1980s. The national media of Bangladesh is rife with controversies over his personal life, including his taste for extreme luxuries, but he is also renowned for his largess and his philanthropic activities.
Name, birth and ancestry
Prince Moosa, a moniker attributed to him by the media, was born in the town of Faridpur, not too far away from the birthplace of the Father of the Nation of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, on the 15th of October 1950. His father, Shamsher Ali Mollah, was a prominent local government official during the British Raj; in later life he resigned himself to meditation and preaching.
The family can trace its roots to fourteenth century Sunni religious teachers (ulema) who migrated from Baghdad; family folklore hints at their ancestors being contemporaries of Nizamuddin Auliya.
Dr. Moosa was awarded a PhD in economics by the California based Pacific Western University. Really?
Business
Dr. Moosa entered into commerce at a very young age, soon after the birth of Bangladesh as a new independent nation. He established the first enterprise of the DATCO conglomerate in 1973, with commodity trading under the auspices of the then socialist government of the Awami League.
Manpower industry
His company worked as one of the first operators to export skilled and unskilled labor from Bangladesh. His rich network of contacts and relationships with key decision makers in the Middle East, including reigning members of royal families, helped establish the DATCO brand as one of the leading companies in Bangladesh's nascent manpower sector.
His company is still noted as one of the premier manpower exporters in the country. DATCO also works with operators in other countries to source skilled and unskilled labor for various parts of the world.
International weapons supply
There have been no corroborated reports of any murky Middle Eastern or Eastern European weapons deal by Dr. Moosa, but numerous Middle Eastern news sources have cited his relationships with highly controversial personalities such as the infamous Armenian weapons dealer Sarkis Soghanalian and the Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.
DATCO group
DATCO group of companies does little to separate itself from other large and prominent business groups in Bangladesh. As reported in the company's web page, they dabble in everything from construction to commodity trading, however, such high degree of unrelated diversification is very much the normal mode of operations for almost all business groups in the region.
Controversies
There are as many controversies about Prince Moosa as there are news stories, but the ones that have received most press attention are:
Frozen accounts
It has been widely reported since 2009, that Swiss authorities froze bank accounts of his worth seven billion US$, on the pretext of irregular transactions. This led him to engage in a legal battle to realize his frozen money deposited in these banks.
Recently it has been heard that all restrictions on the bank account of the US $7 billion frozen by the banks may be withdrawn by the end of this year. Prince Moosa is considering transferring this huge sum of deposits in the country’s central bank.
1971 Bangladesh Liberation War
Various sources have claimed that prior to the Bangladesh Liberation War Dr. Moosa was a student leader for the Awami League, but some sections of the political party today claim that Dr. Moosa acted against the war effort. According to Dr. Moosa, he was held prisoner by the Pakistani armed forces for a large part of the nine month struggle.
Tony Blair
During the UK 1997 general election it was reported that Dr. Moosa offered the Labour Party and Tony Blair ₤5 million as campaign donation. Although the party declined the donation the offer itself received a lot of media attention.
National contribution
Dr. Moosa Bin Shamsher has made significant contribution to the Bangladesh National Exchequer by ensuring a regular flow of foreign currency worth of millions of US dollars. He is highly respected as the pre-eminent architect of man power export to whom the nation shall remain ever grateful. During the last few decades’ natural calamities that befell the nation one after another, he came out in a big way to provide supports to the afflicted people.
Family
He is married to Kaniz Fatema Chowdhury (housewife) and they have three children Nancy Zahara, Bobby Hajjaj and Zubi Bin Moosa.
His only daughter Nancy Zahara received her education from University of Texas at Austin and is now married to Sheikh Fazle Fahim, an eminent businessman, and a scion of the celebrated Sheikh family (grandson of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman).
His eldest son Bobby Hajjaj is an Oxford scholar, and works as a business strategy consultant and also lectures in various universities on the topic; he is also a famed newspaper columnist. Bobby is married to Barrister Rashna Imam who is also an Oxford scholar and a leading young corporate lawyer in Bangladesh; she was previously engaged at Baker & McKenzie, London office, in cross-border mergers and acquisitions.
The youngest son Barrister Zubi Bin Moosa graduated as a Barrister from the prestigious Lincoln’s Inn in London, UK. Zubi is currently pursuing his legal practice at the prestigious chambers of Kamal Hossain and Associates, and his wife, Shumi Nasrin, a graduate from a distinguished Canadian university, is now heading her own business house.
The sybarite
The tycoon is reported to live in palatial splendor, in the Gulshan suburb of Dhaka. A lot has been written in the popular media about the decor of his mansion, the number and standard of butlers employed (over 50 in number, and unique for the country); the staff are reputed to be capable of providing superior services than any five-star hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.
There have been no dearth of publications about Dr. Moosa's love for expensive luxuries, starting from million dollar wrist watches to diamond studded shoes.
He considers himself the ultimate symbol of fashion and style, and numerous publications over the last couple of decades have given full credence to this belief. He is the first man who uses diamond and jewelry on his different specially prepared dresses. He also prefers diamond on his shoes and uses diamond-studded shoes on special occasions.
The London Telegraph, the famous British magazine published an extraordinary cover-story on Dr. Moosa. It followed a series of widespread sensational media reports, particularly in the west. The Telegraph’s special correspondent Nigel Farndale while compiling the cover story captioned Prince Moosa as the ‘Man with the Golden Guns’ wrote “here is the international arms dealer now happily occupying a forefront position in the world who is popularly known, particularly in the western society, as the ‘Prince of Bangladesh’”.
In 1980s, the leading Indian dailies The Hindu and the Times of India quoted Prince Moosa as the richest tycoon in South Asia.