WHO Southeast Asia director resigns amid fraud investigations

WHO regional director resigns amid fraud probes, Saima Wazed quits Southeast Asia post after unpaid leave, agency scrutiny collides with Bangladeshi political fallout

Saima Wazed, the World Health Organization’s regional director for South-East Asia and the daughter of Bangladesh’s ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina, has resigned from her post amid fraud investigations, according to Reuters as cited by Times Now. Wazed began a five-year term in early 2024 but had been placed on unpaid administrative leave, with WHO and Bangladeshi authorities examining allegations including financial fraud linked to travel and questions about academic credentials, Times Now reports. In a resignation letter addressed to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, she said she had “lost trust” in WHO leadership and described her financial position as untenable after nearly a year without pay.

The episode lands in the middle of two overlapping accountability systems that rarely align neatly: an international agency’s internal discipline process and a national government’s criminal investigations. Times Now reports that Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission filed fraud and forgery charges against Wazed under an interim government that took power after Hasina’s ouster following a deadly uprising in mid-2024. At the same time, WHO allegations cited by Times Now include claims of financial fraud and misrepresentation of credentials, which Wazed has denied through lawyers.

For WHO, the resignation ends an awkward holding pattern in one of its most operationally demanding regions, covering countries with large public-health programs and frequent cross-border disease risks. But the way it ends matters: an unpaid leave that stretches close to a year, followed by a public rupture with the director-general, reads less like a clean compliance outcome than a dispute over who controls the process and the narrative.

For Bangladesh, the case shows how quickly a change of regime can turn former elites into legal targets, especially when family ties to a deposed leader are part of the public story. Times Now reports that Wazed’s resignation letter also addressed allegations that she illegally acquired a plot of land in Bangladesh; she said she obtained it before joining WHO and argued she was entitled to it under a Bangladeshi law covering families of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

WHO did not immediately respond to requests for comment, Times Now reports. Wazed, having declined further comment beyond her letter, leaves behind a regional office that now has to fill a leadership vacancy while two investigations — one internal, one national — continue to run on their own clocks.

Wazed’s five-year term began in early 2024 and ends, for now, with a resignation letter citing a year without remuneration and a breakdown of trust with the agency’s top official.