The High Court (HC) on Tuesday refused to grant bail to four officials, including Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL) managing director SOM Kalim Ullah, and three others in connection with the embezzlement of over Tk. 6.7 crore through the illegal Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) business. The vacation bench of the HC,comprising Justice Nizamul Haque and Justice Kasifa Hossain, rejected the petition as it was not placed before the bench.
The three other officials of Ericsson Bangladesh Limited, who filed bail petitions, are: Nazrul Islam, Masrurul Islam and Asif Jahid Chowdhury.
ZI Khan Panna appeared for the petitioners while advocate Khurshid Alam Khan represented the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC), which has filed the cases.
Khan told The Independent that four cases were filed against them over the matter. Nazrul Islam and Masrurul Islam sought bail in two cases while the BTCL managing director and Asif Jahid Chowdhury sought bail in one case.
The petitioners’ lawyers took back the bail petitions as the HC wished to reject their bail petitions, he added.
The cases were filed against the BTCL officials for committing crimes, while the Ericsson officials were accused of assisting in committing offences, the ACC lawyer said.
On August 26, ACC deputy director SM Shahidur Rahman filed four cases with Ramna police station against 23 people, who swindled Tk. 6.7 crore over the last four years through the illegal VoIP business by erasing calls from the call details records.
The ACC case statements said the BTCL officials, in connivance with Ericsson Bangladesh Ltd, embezzled the money by erasing incoming international call minutes from call details records of ITX-5 and ITX-7. As a result of this embezzlement, BTCL now has to pay over Tk. 10 billion to some foreign carriers for the incoming foreign calls.
On November 5, 2012, the commission filed five cases against 14 people, including six officials of BTCL, for misappropriation of government revenue worth Tk. 2.05 billion through the illegal VoIP business.
Earlier, on October 24, 2012, the commission filed another case against three top officials of BTCL and the owner of an IT company on charges of swindling around Tk. 32.7 million of BTCL through the illegal VoIP business.
-With The Independent input
