Chief whip gets urgent money requests from numbers of three MPs

Chief Whip Nurul Islam Moni has received messages from the mobile numbers of three MPs asking him to urgently send Tk 50,000, Tk 30,000 and Tk 25,000.

But when Moni called the MPs, none answered, prompting him to suspect their phones had been hacked.

He raised the issue under a point of order in parliament on Thursday, warning MPs about increasingly sophisticated fraud involving hacked phones, cloned voices and forged signatures.

“It was reported in the newspapers today that messages were sent to me on mobile phone, as I received one here [on Wednesday], supposedly from three honourable members of parliament, asking me to urgently send Tk 50,000, Tk 30,000 and Tk 25,000. They came from three different phones,” he said.

“I tried to contact the people whose phones the messages came from. I called them, but no one answered. No one picked up the phone. It means, the phones have been hacked.”

Moni urged MPs to stay alert, saying fraudsters were also cloning voices and manipulating signatures to produce fake documents.

“Many honourable members of the opposition have faced this. Many members of the ruling party have faced it as well,” he said.

Deputy Speaker Kayser Kamal said vigilance alone was not enough and urged the state to take preventive measures.

Moni replied that the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission was already pursuing measures to tackle such fraud.

Earlier, Moni also raised concerns over face-reading devices installed in parliament’s lobbies but not being used regularly. 

He said MPs should undergo face recognition before entering the chamber and when leaving parliament on Thursday, the final day of the session.