DELTA Life Insurance Company has brought an allegation of bribery involving Tk 50 lakh against the Insurance Development Regulatory Authority Chairman M. Mosharraf Hossain pertaining to renewing the contract of its Chief Executive Officer along with other regulatory approvals. The insurer furnished an audio clip between IDRA chairman and a company executive to support the claim.
In a media briefing on Sunday, Chowdhury Qamrul Ahsan, Executive Director of Delta Life Insurance, made the claim by presenting the said audio clip between Hossain and Md. Abdul Awal, an executive of the 35-year-old insurer, in which the IDRA chairman can be heard soliciting a bribe of Tk 50 lakh.
As per the written document of the company, on November 13, Hossain called Awal to his house and demanded Tk 2 crore as bribe for renewing the contract of CEO, Adeeba Rahman, and approving the actuarial basis of the insurer for 2019. But the Delta Life employee responded in the negative. On November 14, Awal again met Hossain at his residence and recorded the conversation, in which the latter demanded Tk 50 lakh. If the amount is paid, Hossain would renew the CEO’s contract, improve the actuarial basis and waive the fines. If not, he would get journalists to write against Delta Life and appoint an administrator.
Top bureaucrats have to realise that their days of using offices as a moat for corruption are over. No one knows what the ACC will do with the complaint — as they are reluctant to go after the top brass, but if there were an official worth going after it would be this gentleman who looks like using his office to create his personal revenue stream.
Making this official an OSD or simply transferring him won’t be of any use. The only options are to treat him after a probe with such harshness as befits the alleged crime — so that he doesn’t do it again. The people don’t want to see every issue with top level bureaucrats who are corrupt to be pushed under the rug.
