Finance Minister AMA Muhith Saturday said the report of the World Bank’s external panel of experts on the Padma bridge corruption conspiracy was flawed and incom-petent as it did not mention the name of the prime minister’s Economic Adviser Mashiur Rahman.
“The World Bank gave the government a vital condition of excluding Mashiur Rah-man from the project for the disbursement of the Padma bridge loan, but it failed to mention his name in its report,” Muhith said at a workshop on the role of media in national development.
“Mashiur Rahman was even sent on leave following the World Bank condition,” he said.
He said no big name except those of former communications minister Syed Abul Hossain and former state minister for foreign affairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury was mentioned in the World Bank report.
Muhith claimed that the global lender would not be able to complete the investiga-tion of the Padma bridge’s possible corruption conspiracy by 2015.
He further said the tender of the Padma bridge would be finalised in September and the government would construct the bridge with its own fund because the govern-ment wanted to prove that it was capable of doing such big projects.
“We received proposals from China and Russia regarding financing of the Padma bridge,” he said. “But we have already refused to accept their proposals as the is-sues of corruption and transparency would have surfaced again.”
On July 17, the World Bank’s external panel of experts submitted its final report to the finance minister without making any final assessment of the probe, saying it would have to wait until the Anti-Corruption Commission completed its investiga-tion to say whether it was “full and fair.”