Gulam Rabbani and Noman Mosharef :
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is busy with recovering money than strengthening the legal procedure in major corruption cases. As a result the accused are getting advantages in their defence.
Sources said that the immediate past chairman of the ACC recovered about Tk 20,000 crore in the last two years of his tenure. And this is what they have tried to show as a great success.
The legal experts say money recovering is not the duty of the ACC, as the law did not give them such power. The money recovering is a proof that the accused embezzled or laundered money. So, there is an opportunity to take quick action against them.
But in many cases, even after years, the ACC didn’t submit a charge-sheet. It is either their weakness or one kind of technique to avoid taking action against the influential people of the society.
Barrister Shanjid Siddique, a Supreme Court lawyer, said, “The role of the ACC has clearly been defined in the statute and it cannot exercise any power which is not provided in the Act or in the accompanying Rules. The ACC should strictly adhere to the procedures and time limit for inquiry and investigation to bring the accused to justice and conduct the prosecution efficiently for securing conviction.”
“If the ACC is engaged in recovering money from the accused who is allegedly involved in corruption, instead of expeditiously conducting inquiry and investigation, it will not help in any way reduce corruption in the society,” said the lawyer.
The Anti-Corruption Commission in 2015 filed 56 cases against BASIC Bank’s loan scam involving more than Tk 4,500 crore. But not a single investigation has been completed in the last six years. The money was siphoned out between 2009 and 2013.
The ACC law requires investigation to be completed within180 days for a case. The deadline, however, can be extended considering the scope and complexity of investigation. As for the BASIC Bank cases, another five years passed beyond the deadline, but the ACC failed to submit the charge-sheets.
ACC’s Chief Counsel Advocate Khurshid Alam said that investigations had been delayed due to the nature of the cases.
But the ACC has already recovered more than Tk 1000 crore, said the lawyer. Though he admitted that money recovering is not the duty of the ACC.
In May 2018, the High Court ordered to finish the investigations of all the cases within 60 days, but the order went in vain. A month later, another bench of the court summoned the investigating officers for an explanation of their delay. The investigating officials assured the court of completing the probe faster.
The ACC lawyer also said that the anti-corruption watchdog has recently recovered around Tk 36 crore from the accused of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP) corruption cases and deposited it to the state exchequer.
But the organization is making delay in completing the investigation reports in the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant corruption cases and this delay is giving a scope to the most of the accused to secure bail.
A special court in Pabna passed 28 bail orders in June related to the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant corruption cases by which 15-20 accused got bail.
Md Asaduzzaman, Senior Special Judge of Pabna, said in the bail orders that the investigation officers failed to complete the investigations of the cases within the time stipulated or within the extended time as described in the Section 20(ka) of the Durnity Daman Commission Ain, 2004.
In April 2014, the ACC filed a case with Gulshan Police Station against five people, including Farmers Bank’s former audit committee Chairman Mahbubul Haque Chisty alias Babul Chisty and his wife, on charge of misappropriation of Tk160 crore from the bank.
Although the testimony in this case is in the final stage, no charge-sheet has been submitted in other cases filed for this corruption, said Khurshid Alam Khan. Farmers Bank was renamed Padma Bank after the scandal.
The High Court has blamed the Anti-Corruption Commission different times for the failure to arrest PK Halder before he managed to flee the country. It said the ACC helped Halder escape by making a delay of 13 hours in issuing a travel ban on him.
“By delaying, you have given him [Halder] the scope to leave the country,” an HC Bench told ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan during a hearing in March this year.
Proshanta Kumar Halder, also known as PK Halder, is accused of embezzling and laundering a huge amount of public money from some non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs). He fled the country on October 23, 2019.
The ACC reportedly sent the travel ban notice to the immigration office 13 hours after deciding to issue the notice. Those 13 hours were enough for Halder to flee, the bench of Justice M Enayetur Rahim and Justice Md Mostafizur Rahman said.
