Dhaka North Mayor Annisul accepts Islami Bank money for CCTV cameras

Planning Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal had earlier ran into a storm of criticism for taking the bank’s money to fund the 2011 Cricket World Cup preparations.

The Islami Bank in a media statement said on Wednesday it has given the mayor Tk 5 million to install CCTV cameras in the capital’s Gulshan-Banani area.

The bank said: “Dhaka North City Mayor Annisul Huq, on behalf of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police law and order coordination committee, accepted the cheque from the Islami Bank Chairman Mustafa Anwar at a function held at the city corporation office.”

It added that Banani Society Chairman Shawkat Ali Bhuiyan Dilan and the bank’s Executive Vice President AHM Latif Uddin Chowdhury were also present at the function.

There are allegations of Jamaat-e-Islami leaders exercising control over the bank’s Board of Directors.

Former Janata Bank chairman and economist Prof Abul Barkat in a recent discussion lashed out at the then Bangladesh Cricket Board president Kamal for having taken the bank’s money to fund the 2011 Cricket World Cup preparations in Bangladesh.

Kamal defended himself later in a press conference saying he had taken the money for a ‘good cause’.

On Independence Day, March 26 last year, the Islami Bank funding of a mass singing of the national anthem had been widely denounced by the Ganajagaran Mancha and other organisations.

The government later said no money received from the bank was spent to organise the event.

Mir Quasem Ali, a member of the Jamaat’s central working committee, who has been sentenced to death for 1971 war crimes, was the bank’s former vice chairman.

It is alleged that the bank’s former chairman Abu Nasser Muhammad Abduz Zaher was an Al-Badr leader in Chittagong at the time of the Liberation War.

Another former bank chairman Shah Abdul Hannan is known to be close to the Jamaat.

And its former deputy managing director Syed Abdullah Md Saleh happens to be the brother of former Jamaat MP Abdullah Md Taher.