In terms of enforcement, the number of contractors being debarred by the World Bank for corrupt practices is rising. As well as its own work on this, the wider development bank community has had a more co-ordinated approach to the problem, with an agreement signed in 2010 that means a contractor debarred by one institution can be made ineligible for work funded by any of the major multi-lateral banks.

Most of the country’s rare earth factories have been closed since early August, including those under government control, to allow for installation of pollution control equipment that must be in place by Oct. 1, executives and regulators said.

And the Padma Bridge is not the first case in recent years where the World Bank has withdrawn funding because of compliance concerns. In February last year it cancelled a risk guarantee to the Nairobi Toll Road in Kenya because of weak governance on the project.

The government is determined to clean up the industry, said Xu Xu, chairman of the China Chamber of Commerce of Metals, Minerals and Chemicals Importers and Exporters, a government-controlled group that oversees the rare earth industry. “The entrepreneurs don’t care about environmental problems, don’t care about labor problems and don’t care about their social responsibility,” he said. “And now we have to educate them.”

But the Padma Bridge is an altogether higher profile case and one where the smell of corruption has grown stronger and stronger. Last September the World Bank referred concerns about employees of SNC Lavalin, which had bid to be the client's engineer on the scheme, to Canadian authorities. That led last month to two former company executives appearing in a Toronto court to face charges of bribery and corruption of a foreign official.

Now that summer has finally arrived, I've heard from many homeowners over the past week who are now ready to move forward with their concrete projects, such as patios, driveways, , and sidewalks.

A common question I hear from people planning projects involving concrete and whether they should use fibre-reinforced concrete, rebar, wire mesh, or a combination of these three items to increase the structural strength of the concrete slab.

The case is yet to reach its conclusion, but with what the World Bank described as, "Credible evidence corroborated by a variety of sources," that corruption took place, it was left with few options but to withdraw its loan. And to give the Bank its due, it first tried to keep the project with on track through a different procurement process, but said the government of Bangladesh was not taking the corruption issues seriously enough.