Sagar Biswas :An influential syndicate has allegedly started lobbying to suppress big corruption scandal in the Department of Immigration and Passports [DIP] where several officials and employees have been suspended recently for issuing around 2000 forged official passports. The matter has already been informed to the Prime Minister’s Office, Chairman of Anti-Corruption Commission and Senior Secretary to the Ministry of Home Affairs with an appeal to take immediate action, official sources said on Monday.When contacted, Director General of the DIP, NM Zeaul Alam, said on Monday that they have already cancelled about 90 official passports so far. “We have filed a case against the officials and employees of the department after finding proof of the forgeries,” he said. He said, “All the passports were MRP [machine readable passport]. But the relevant papers were forged. We are also trying to detect other passports made with forged documents.”Replying to a query, the DIP DG said: “We have sent some specific proposals to Ministry of Home Affairs to impose restriction for getting official passports by the civil servants.” At first, the matter came to light when the Government of Turkey formally sent an allegation to Bangladesh Government in February last about issuing ‘official passport’ to general people using forged documents by some unscrupulous DIP officials. In its allegation, the Government of Turkey said that many Bangladeshis with ‘official passports’ did not leave for their home even after expiry of their visa tenure. After getting the allegation, the Home Ministry launched an investigation. It was found that the crime racket involving officials of the DIP allegedly issued around 2,000 official passports to ineligible civilians [from November 2014 to April 2015] and earned over Tk 50 crore. Some agents of different recruitment agencies were also involved with the process.Not only that, none of the official passport holders submitted NOC [no objection certificate] of their higher authorities. Over 1000 official passport holders had submitted forged NOCs whereas the DIP issued official passports to the said applicants in a hurry. At the same time, several applicants also got official passports although they were eligible only for normal passport. In this backdrop, the Home Ministry suspended four DIP officials, including DIP Director Munshi Muyeed Ekram, Assistant Director SM Shahjahan, Senior Clerks Md Shahjahan Mia and Md Saiful Islam. But most of the real culprits remained untouched. Earlier, the DIP being instructed by Home Ministry formed a three-member inquiry committee headed by DIP Director Selina Banu on May 29. The committee was scheduled to submit report by June 17. The committee members were changed within 13 days of its formation although the DIP after a primary investigation had found that the passports were issued using forged official orders of different government offices using the names and seals of Class-I officials. There is widespread allegation that the crime racket runs human trafficking through this malpractice. It is also alleged that the racket led by a suspended DIP Director Munshi Muyeed Ekram has raised a fat-fund to bear expense of the lobbying and already changed the investigation officer with an intension to divert the probe.At the same time, the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence [DGFI], National Security Intelligence [NSI], Special Branch [SB] and Criminal Investigation Department [CID] also conducted simultaneous investigation to identify the culprits involved in the ‘official passport forgery’ scam.Later, the Financial Intelligence Unit [FIU] of Bangladesh Bank had sought information on bank accounts of 11 officials of the DIP, including the DG NM Zeaul Alam and directors, and their family members. The DIP normally issues three categories of passports — regular or tourist passports [green cover], official passports [blue cover] and diplomatic passports [red cover]. The official passport holders usually get visa-free access to certain countries. There are at least 14 countries, including Turkey, Korea, Brazil, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Chile, Belarus, the Philippines, Malaysia and India, where government officials are entitled to get visas on arrival. The crime racket earlier had allegedly issued a number of passports to several criminals, Rohingyas and even members of the United Liberation Front of Asom [Ulfa], who are foreign nationals, according to sources.
