[ALOCHONA] ACC okays charges against Khaeda, Tareq, Saifur, Bhuiyan, Nizami

GATCO CORRUPTION CASE
ACC okays charges against Khaleda, son, 8 cabinet colleagues
Courtesy New Age 9/5/08

The Anti-Corruption Commi-ssion on Thursday approved the submission of the charge sheet against the detained former prime minister Khaleda Zia, eight of her cabinet colleagues, including Saifur Rahman and Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, her youngest son Arafat Rahman and 14 others in the GATCO scam case.
   ‘The commission approved the submission of the charge sheet pressing charges against the 24 for the award of a contract to an incompetent and unfit firm, Global Agro Trade Company, to handle containers at the Inland Container Depot in Dhaka and at Chittagong port allegedly for bribe incurring a loss of more than Tk 14.56 crore to the state exchequer,’ the commission’s spokesman Hanif Iqbal said at a briefing.
   The investigation officer of the case will soon submit the charge sheet with court after completing some pending tasks, he said.
   ‘The late shipping minister Akbar Hossain’s son Ismail Hossain Simon and Arafat Rahman took Tk 2,19,99,736 in bribe from GATCO for the award of the contact,’ said Hanif, also the commission’s director general (administration).
   Besides Khaleda, also the Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, and Arafat, the commission will press charges against former finance minister M Saifur Rahman, former LGRD and cooperatives minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, also the
   expelled BNP secretary general, former agriculture minister MK Anwar, former information minister M Shamsul Islam, former industries minister Matiur Rahman Nizami, also the Jamaat-e-Islami amir, former health minister Khandker Mosharraf Hossain, former state minister for energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain and former state minister for commerce Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury.
   Saifur, also the acting chairperson of the government-backed splinter group of the BNP, on Wednesday, a day before his departure for Singapore on Wednesday night for treatment, made a U-turn and conceded that his leadership had become ineffective as most of the available standing committee members officially invalidated the meeting which made him the party chief.
   All of the accused former ministers were members on the cabinet committee on purchase that approved the proposal for the award of the contract to GATCO. All but Amir Khasru, who is now abroad, gave their deposition in the case before an investigation team.
   Corruption charges also will be pressed against former shipping secretary Zulfikar Haider Chowdhury, Chittagong Port Authority’s former engineer AKM Rashid Uddin Ahmed, and GATCO director Shahjahan M Hasib.
   The eight ministers and Zulfikar Haider Chowdhury, AKM Rashid Uddin Ahmed, M Hasib were not implicated in the first information report, lodged by the commission’s deputy director Golam Shahriar Chowdhury with the Tejgaon police on September 2, 2007 against 13 persons amid a crackdown in the interim period on former ruling politicians.
   The commission will also press charges against former Chittagong Port Authority chairmen Zulfiquar Ali and AMM Shahadat Hossain, former CPA director (transport) MA Sanwar Hossain, its chief accounts officer Ahmed Abul Kashem, former CPA member Lutful Kabir, Global Agro Trade directors Syed Galib Ahmed, Syed Tanvir Ahmed and AKM Musa Kajal, former shipping minister Akbar Hossain’s wife Jahanara Akbar and his son Ismail Hossain, and Ismail’s friend Ehsan Yusuf. All of them were named in the first information report.
   The commission on September 18, 2007 placed the case under the Emergency Powers Rules 2007, terming it a serious case of public interest.
   The investigation officer, Jahirul Huda, also a deputy director of the commission, on November 4, 2007 submitted the investigation report, recommending the filing of the charge sheet against 31 people.
   But the commission delayed the approval for the submission of the charge sheet saying it was waiting for the Supreme Court’s decision on placing the trial of offences committed before the declaration of the state of emergency under the emergency rules.
   The GATCO case was the first-ever corruption case against Khaleda, now detained in a special jail facing three graft cases after her arrest on September 2, 2007. The commission on Monday submitted the charge sheet against her and 10 others in the Niko corruption case.
   Another case against Khaleda for the embezzlement of Tk 158.71 crore by awarding the production, operation and maintenance contracts for the Barapukuria coal mine to the highest bidder is still under investigation.
   The charge sheet in the GATCO case, however, will be the first against Khaleda’s youngest son Arafat. Both of her sons are now in jail.

 

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