Staff Reporter :
The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested a fraud businessman named Monirul Hossain, locally known as ‘Golden Monir’, on charges of possessing illicit gold, firearms, and drugs.
In a midnight drive on Friday, the elite force detained him from his Merul Badda residence in the city with arms, bullets, and huge foreign currencies.
Lt Col Ashik Billah, Director of RAB’s legal and media wing, disclosed the story in a press conference on Saturday morning.
According to the Rab official, Monir used to work as a salesman in a cloth shop at Gausia market of the capital in the nineties. After that he started crockery business. Then he started luggage business and used to bring goods from different overseas countries evading tax.
At one stage he got involved with gold smuggling. He thus owned thousands of crores of taka by smuggling gold and occupying land and through forgery.
A team of RAB-3 raided Monir’s six-storey building in DIT Project area from Friday midnight to Saturday morning, said Ashique Billah.During the drive, they arrested Monir and recovered a foreign pistol, a few round of bullets, foreign liquor, huge foreign currencies, seized eight kg gold, five luxurious cars and cash around Tk 1.9 crore, the RAB official said.
Apprehended Monir was also a land grabber, who in collusion with some dishonest officials of RAJUK became owner of more than 200 plots in DIT Project, Badda, Nikunja, Uttara and Keraniganj areas.
However, three cases will be filed against him on charge of possessing illegal currency, firearms and drugs.
The RAB will also request the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to investigate the matter respectively, Ashique Billah added.
Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Jewelers Association has said that the Golden Monir arrested by the RAB n the capital is not a gold trader.
This information was given in a press release sent to the media on Saturday afternoon by the top leader of this organization.
