The Anti-Corruption Commission on Sunday approved four cases against 22 people, including the present managing director SOM Kalim Ullah and three former managing directors of Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Ltd, regarding their suspected involvement in illegal
Voice over Internet Protocol business.Commissioner M Shahabuddin told New Age that the commission at a meeting had approved the cases.
Officials said that the commission had spotted that the suspects had embezzled about Tk 575.33 crore through illegal VoIP business in four years.
The commission’s deputy director SM Sahidur Rahman will file the cases with the Ramna police this week, the officials said.
The 22 accused include BTCL managing director SOM Kalim Ullah, former directors SM Khairuzzaman, Afsar-ul-Alam and Md Abu Sayed Khan, former member Mohammad Tawfiq, general manager Anowerul Mamun, former divisional engineers Romel Chakma and Habibur Rahman Pramanik and Ericsson Bangladesh Ltd’s contract manager Asif Jahid, public relation manager Nazrul Islam and engineer Masrurul Hakim.
The commission officials said the BTCL officials in collusion with multinational Ericsson Bangladesh Ltd had embezzled the money by erasing incoming international call minutes from the records of ITX-5 and ITX-7 at Mohakhali in the capital.
According to the report, the number of international incoming calls a day has now declined by 15 million minutes from nearly 45 million minutes recorded early 2010. The decline is reportedly causing a daily revenue loss to the tune of Tk 100 million.
The report says the worst thing is that some foreign carriers now owe more than Tk 10 billion to the BTCL on the account of incoming foreign calls.
Some foreign carriers allegedly submitted forged letters of guarantee from local banks while taking permission from the government. No one in the BTCL cared to check the authenticity of the letters of bank guarantee.
According to the report, international gateways and interconnection exchanges of the BTCL are on the same platform and connected to other telecoms operators, which could allow calls to bypass proper channels.
According to another commission inquiry report, more than Tk 12,000 crore was misappropriated through illegal VoIP business and smuggled out of the country in three years.
Courtesy of New Age
