The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has gathered information on illegal assets of four MPs and three ministers of the previous Grand Alliance government.
Published : 25 Mar 2014, 06:31 PM
They include former Health Minister AFM Ruhal Haque, former State Minister for Water Resources Mahbubur Rahman Talukder and former State Minister for Housing and Public Works Abdul Mannan Khan.
The graft watchdog’s Commissioner Nasiruddin Ahmed on Tuesday told bdnews24.com that their preliminary investigation, based on the affidavits of these MPs and ministers, found proof of their illegal assets.
The four others are Abdur Rahman Badi, Enamul Haque, Aslamul Haque and Abdul Zabbar.
Ruhal, Mahbubur, Badi, Enamul, Aslamul and Zabbar were again elected MPs in the 10th Parliament. Mannan Khan lost in the last general election.
Apart from Zabbar who is a leader of the Jatiya Party, the rest six are leaders of the ruling Awami League.
The ACC had started the probe against the seven after media, before the 10th parliamentary election, citing the candidates' affidavits reported several former ministers and lawmakers had amassed huge wealth over the last five years.
The watchdog has already grilled all, except Rajshahi-4 MP Enamul, after summoning them to the Commission. It also sent notices to all of them to submit their wealth statements.
On Jan 22, it had deputed seven ACC Deputy Directors as investigation officers to conduct the probe on theses seven politicians.
Nasiruddin is the head of this investigation team.
The ACC also collected from the Election Commission copies of the affidavits the seven had filed with their nomination papers before the polls.
Nasiruddin, however, said, “It’s not that we have got the information of their illegal assets only from the affidavits. We collected information from different other sources including their income tax statements. The ACC also conducted separate investigations.”
Satkhira-3 MP Ruhal and Dhaka-14 MP Aslamul said their affidavits submitted initially had contained some ‘wrong information’, which they corrected later.
But the ACC Commissioner said, “Information of assets in the affidavits is very important. Whatever information any individual may provide in the electoral affidavit that is regarded as authentic as per the law in Bangladesh. No correction afterwards in this regard is allowed.”
Whoever is saying that they resubmitted corrected wealth statement later, they possibly were not aware of the law, said Nasiruddin.
Asked what would be the ACC’s next step, he said the seven politicians were told to submit their wealth statements to the anti-graft watchdog.
“We will compare their statements with the information we have. Then we will decide what to do next.”