The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) will launch an investigation into the wealth and assets of some ministers and MPs of the previous government. The decision was
taken at a meeting on Sunday, a senior ACC official said.
The official said former ministers and MPs, who contested the January 5 general elections, would be asked to submit statements regarding their wealth to the
commission. “We have agreed in principle to probe the allegations against those who amassed huge amounts of wealth beyond their known sources of income,” said ACC
chairman M Bodiuzzaman. Talking to The Independent, Bodiuzzaman said the commission would investigate some well-known ministers and lawmakers, whose wealth statements
in their affidavits showed a lot of discrepancies. “The ACC will examine the discrepancies in the wealth statements submitted by the candidates before the 10th
Parliamentary poll,” he added.
He also said necessary numbers of ACC officials would be deployed to deal with the matter. The anti-corruption watchdog chief, however, did not disclose the names of
the former ministers or lawmakers of the previous Awami League-led government.
An official, however, said the commission had decided to probe allegations against five candidates, including former state minister for housing and public works Abdul
Mannan Khan, who lost the January 5 election.
He said the commission would initially begin the probe by scrutinizing around 60 news clippings regarding the assets of former ministers and MPs. “The processes will
be carried out one by one,” he added. According to anti-graft campaigners and election watchdogs, the huge accumulation of wealth by some former ministers and
lawmakers showed how politics has become a means of making money.
On December 14, the Election Commission (EC) made the wealth statements of the candidates for the 10th Parliamentary polls public.
The media reports also highlighted huge discrepancies between the declared wealth of prominent leaders of the ruling Awami League and the statements they had provided
before the 9th Parliamentary poll in 2008.
It was revealed that former state minister for housing and public works, Abdul Mannan Khan, having assets worth only Tk. 10 lakh in 2008, reported assets worth Tk. 11
crore in his statement submitted to the EC before the polls.
The annual income of the wife of the minister for environment and forests, Hasan Mahmud, shot up from Tk. 19 lakh in 2008 to Tk. 2 crore in 2013. The report of former
state minister for local government, rural development and cooperatives Jahangir Kabir Nanak’s assets showed a rise in his assets from Tk. 1 crore to Tk. 8.25 crore.
Similar discrepancies had also been found in the wealth statements of lawmakers and former and current ministers, their spouses and dependants, including former
minister-without-portfolio Suranjit Sengupta and former primary and mass education minister Afsarul Amin, both of whom have been elected MPs unopposed.
Courtesy of The Independent
