The Anti-Corruption Commission will soon withdraw charges against all the seven accused and the suspected people in connection with the Padma bridge corruption conspiracy case since the anti-graft body did not find any evidence against them.
“Following newspaper reports in 2011, we initiated an inquiry into corruption allegations in the project, but found nothing suspicious. Later in 2012, we initiated an inquiry into the corruption conspiracy in appointment of consultant as the World Bank requested us to do so. The ACC investigators again have found nothing,” commission Chairman M Bodiuzzaman said yesterday.
The ACC chief made the disclosure after the commission in a regular meeting approved the probe report and recommended withdrawal of the charges against the accused and the suspects.
After 20 months’ investigation, ACC official Mirza Jahidul Alam submitted the report to the commission on Sunday with a recommendation to discharge the seven accused.
The ACC in 2012 filed a case for alleged “corruption conspiracy” hoping that it would find evidence during the investigation stage. “But nothing suspicious was found in the appointment process of consultant,” the commission chairman said.
The commission has reached the decision as the probe team failed to find any credible document to prove the allegation of corruption conspiracy, even after attending a Canadian court.
Asked why the commission filed the case without any strong documents, Commissioner M Shahabuddin said: “We filed the case after assessing primary evidence like media reports and World Bank’s recommendation. But finally our investigation team has not found any proof against the accused of bribery in appointing consultant.”
He also claimed that there was no relation between discharging the accused and World Bank’s withdrawal of fund for the project.
Allegations of corruption conspiracy by Bangladesh government functionaries in the process of awarding the bridge’s construction supervision to Canadian consultancy firm SNC-Lavalin led the World Bank to suspend its pledged $1.2bn credit line for the project in June, 2012.
In April last year, the World Bank blacklisted SNC-Lavalin for 10 years.
The seven accused are former Bridges Division secretary Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, now Privatisation Board member; Bangladesh Bridge Authority Superintendent Engineer Kazi Mohammad Ferdous; Roads and Highways Department Executive Engineer Riaz Ahmad Jaber; and Engineering Planners Consultant Ltd Deputy Managing Director Mohammad Mostafa; and SNC-Lavalin’s former director Mohammad Ismail, former vice-presidents Kevin Wallace and Ramesh Shah.
The names of former state minister for foreign affairs Abul Hasan Chowdhury and former communication minister Syed Abul Hossain were kept in the case as suspects.
About Ramesh Shah’s diary, Shahabuddin said: “We ran our investigation without the so-called diary since there is difference between diary and notepad. The World Bank termed it a diary whereas the Canadian court documents say it was a notepad.”
The World Bank report and its requesting the ACC for launching an investigation on possible corruption had been mysterious, he said replying to queries.
Earlier, an ACC team led by its former legal adviser Anisul Huq, now law minister, visited Canada twice to collect copy of the diary.
A World Bank note, prepared based on Ramesh’s diary, lists the names of some Bangladesh functionaries as “Padma PCC,” “4% Min,” “2% Kaiser,” “2% Nixon,” “1% Secretary” and “1% Moshi Rahman.”
According to the documents, “Min” stands for Syed Abul Hossain; “Kaiser” for Abul Hasan Chowdhury; “Nixon” for Mujibur Rahman MP, the prime minister’s nephew; “Secretary” for Mosharraf; “Moshi Rahman” for the prime minister’s adviser Mashiur Rahman.
Sahabuddin said: “We found no strong evidence against the accused to place them before the court and decided not to run the case any more.”