Babar charged with amassing Tk 7cr illegal wealth

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The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) yesterday pressed charges against detained former state minister for home Lutfozzaman Babar in a corruption case filed for accumulating illegal wealth and hiding information about his actual assets from the commission.

Rupak Kumar Saha, deputy assistant director of the ACC and investigation officer (IO) of the case, submitted the charge sheet to Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s (CMM) Court, showing nine people as prosecution witnesses.

The charge sheet was prepared under sections 26 (1) and 27(1) of the Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2004 and Section 15 of the Emergency Power Rules 2007.

The IO in his charge sheet maintained that Babar should be brought to trial as charges against him were primarily proved to be true.

He said the former state minister had amassed assets worth over Tk 6.79 crore through illegal means and hid information on wealth amounting to more than Tk 7 crore from the commission.

On January 13, ACC Assistant Director Mirza Zahidul Alam filed the case with Ramna Police Station accusing that Babar made a fortune of about Tk 6.74 crore through illegal means and hid information about Tk 7.6 crore of his assets.

Babar reported his wealth to the ACC on July 7 last year through the Dhaka Central Jail authorities.

He had claimed in his wealth statement that he and his family own about Tk 6.77 crore in moveable and immovable property.

He showed construction costs of his 5,938sq-feet under-construction building in Netrakona’s Madan upazila at Tk 8 lakh. But the Public Works Department later determined the costs to be around Tk 34.43 lakh, the case statement said.

It said the former state minister did not mention about Tk 6.79 lakh deposited in his savings account with Prime Bank’s Gulshan branch.

Moreover, information collected from the bank shows that US$1 million was wired to Babar’s bank account in Singapore on June 20 last year.

He could not give any explanation as to the source of this money which suggest that he stashed away the money in a foreign bank account as it was not earned through legal sources, said the case statement.

Babar was arrested at his Gulshan residence on May 28 last year. The law enforcement agencies also recovered four firearms–a shotgun, a rifle, a pistol and a revolver, two magazines and 297 rounds of ammunition.

He has already been sentenced to 17 years’ rigorous imprisonment for illegally keeping the arms and ammunition.

The law enforcers also recovered Tk 20 crore he received from the Bashundhara Group in exchange for allegedly sparing the son of the group’s chairman from murder charges.

Shafiat Sobhan, son of Bashundhara chairman Ahmed Akbar Sobhan, was the prime suspect of the July 2006 murder of Bashundhara director Humayun Kabir Sabbir.

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