Abdur Rahman Bodi, Awami League MP from Cox’s Bazar, was sent to jail yesterday after a Dhaka court had rejected his bail plea in a case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission for amassing wealth beyond his known source of income.
Bodi thus became the first ruling party lawmaker to land in prison during the current tenure of the Awami League. Yesterday, before seeking bail, he surrendered before the court of Dhaka Metropolitcan Magistrate Maruf Hossain, who rejected the plea and sent him to jail.
On August 21, ACC Assistant Director Md Abdus Sobhan filed the case against Bodi with the capital’s Ramna police station.
A few days later, the lawmaker issued a threat saying he would expose all secrets of the graft buster and its chairman M Bodiuzzaman if they tried to prove him corrupt.
“Respected Mr Bodiuzzaman, the ACC chairman, your name is Bodi and my name is Bodi too. If one Bodi wants to drive out another Bodi, every secret will be disclosed,” he said at that time.
When contacted, ACC lawyer Kabir Hossain told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that investigation had revealed that the lawmaker had accumulated huge wealth beyond his known sources of income.
“He had only Tk50 lakh when he first became an MP. But it [his wealth] now stands at over Tk16 crore. The ACC has the authority to go deeper into how he has accumulated this wealth and investigation is going on now,” he said.
In February, the ACC sought a statement of wealth from the lawmaker. In that document, he showed that his family owned tangible and intangible assets worth over Tk5.20 crore. However, the income tax return that he had submitted in November last year showed that the value of their assets was more than Tk16.06 crore.
Two years ago, Bodi purchased a 0.6 decimal land in Teknaf upazila for nearly Tk42 lakh. Documents showed that eight months later, he sold that land for Tk2.4 crore, which was nearly five times higher than the purchase price. According the local land office, the current market price of 0.6 decimal land in that area can be Tk6 lakh at best.
Although he told the ACC in the wealth statement that he had acquired the assets with income generated from his “export-import” business, he could not produce any valid document when investigators went to him. The ACC believes that he has hidden assets worth over Tk10 crore.
In February, Bodi challenged the ACC claiming that he would resign if investigators could prove the allegations.
When the ACC first moved to investigate, he claimed that the allegations were baseless and were intended to tarnish his political image.
“Some journalists, in collusion with the opposition party, have published negative reports against me to tarnish my image...I belong to a family of businessmen and I did not whiten any black money; rather I ran my businesses and paid taxes properly,” he told journalists at that time.
According to the affidavit that Bodi had filed with the Election Commission before the January 5 election, his net asset was worth Tk49.79 lakh in 2008, which rose to Tk15.57 crore in 2013 at the end of his five year term as a lawmaker.
Section 26(2) of the Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2004 reads that if any person, after having received notice from the ACC, fails to furnish the information or provides any false or baseless information, then that person will be sentenced to a prison term of up to three years or an amount of fine or both.
Section 27(1) of the same act says if there are sufficient and reasonable grounds to believe that a person has obtained ownership of property through dishonest means which is not consistent with known sources of income, then that person will be sentenced to minimum three to maximum ten years’ imprisonment and the properties will be confiscated.