Top officials of the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation (BCIC) under the Industries Ministry yesterday confessed before a parliamentary watchdog that its corrupt officials had caused the theft of over Tk3,115 crore during a period of five years.
Industries Secretary Mohammad Uddin Abdullah and BCIC Chairman Munsur Ali Shikder came under fire of the 10-member parliamentary Committee on Public Undertaking, in connection with theft, embezzlement, wastage, and reluctance or wilful procrastination in realising public money that led to the drainage of around Tk623 crore every year.
A BCCI paper presented at the meeting further showed that an additional Tk11.5 crore was spent in violation of the government’s financial guidelines.
The Dhaka Tribune has obtained the paper which states that the corruption took place between 2006-07 and 2010-11 fiscal years.
Besides, 531 more audit objections involving over Tk1,525 crore were yet to be disposed off in the same five fiscal years.
“Both the industries secretary and the BCCI chairman have confessed that they were not ready to give us the answers to the causes of the theft and corruption. We have expressed serious dissatisfaction about it,”
Shawkat Ali, the committee chairman, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“We will send you a detailed report on how the corruption took place in the next seven days,” Shawkat Ali quoted the BCIC chairman as saying.
“Our recommendations are: catch the corrupt employees and punish them as soon as possible.”
The Committee on Public Undertaking is a body tasked to ensure transparency and accountability of over 300 departments and wings under different ministries. Its recommendations are not mandatory for the departments.
However, in most of the cases, the discussions in the meetings force the parent ministries and respective departments to correct themselves.
Without referring to the nature of the theft and financial corruption, the BCCI paper stated that the largest financial corruption took place during the rule of the army-backed caretaker government in 2007-08 fiscal year: around Tk1,178 crore in 256 audit objections.
In the first two fiscal years under the Awami League government (2009-10 and 2010-11), 487 audit objections involving around Tk961 crore were reported.
The reports of the commercial audit wing observed that the BCIC officials allowed theft of urea fertiliser, payment of transport costs in excessive rates, paying more festival bonus and other allowances in violation of the financial rules.
“The factories under the BCIC are showing ghost temporary workers. For instance, if they employ 500 workers in factories, they officially show it as 5,000, swindling the wages of the 4,500 workers. The additional amount of money goes to the corrupt officials,” Shahidur Rahman Chowdhury, director of the commercial audit wing that audited the BCIC, told the Dhaka tribune.
In most of the cases, he said, the corrupt officials earned money in procurement at higher rates.
“Very often, the contracts for service or product delivery go to the relatives or close friends of the respective officials to pocket the money,” said Shahidur.
At its latest meeting, the parliamentary watchdog on Industries Ministry discussed the corruption of one of the CBA leaders in the BCIC who appointed his relatives and others in the department in exchange of money.
The standing committee further said contractors had supplied the Karnaphuli Paper Mill with a locally-made inferior equipment instead of the agreed-upon Japanese equipment that cost Tk36 crore.
After detecting the corruption, the standing committee recommended the BCIC to not refund guarantee money of the contractor. But the corporation paid them the money worth Tk9 crore, flouting the standing committee recommendations.
During the previous ninth parliament, the Standing Committee on Industries Ministry alleged that the BCIC had bought an old roller for the Karnaphuli Paper Mill. Besides, the mill authorities used sub-standard talcum powder and line stone that deteriorated the quality of the paper.
The paper mill authorities also allegedly resorted to corrupt means to procure a 15-ton overhead crane. The parliamentary committee detected that the mill authorities had been using two small cranes instead of one 15-ton crane.
