The Truth and Accountability Commission (Tac) will begin issuing notices on high government officials in a week, directing them to answer their alleged complicity in corruption, its Chairman Justice Habibur Rahman Khan yesterday said.
The commission took the decision on the basis of information collected from low-tier public officials who have voluntarily confessed before it to having ill-gotten wealth, he said.
He said the Tac has not got any applications for clemency from high-profile politicians and businessmen, but hoped that things will change soon as the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is about to go back to full-bore graft-busting drive again.
Justice Habib was talking to reporters at a regular press briefing at the commission.
On why top politicians are not hitting the commission, he said, “A change has come in the political landscape after many accused politicians came out of jail on bail. None of them want to be disqualified for the general election by making confessions.”
He named a list of government departments well-known for rampant corruption from where no officials applied to the commission to make self-confession.
“There is no reason for any accused to live tension-free. They must pay back if involved in any misdeed,” he said.
He said corruption needs be rooted out or kept to a tolerable level for the sake of restoration of democracy.
“The accused politicians and businessmen won’t roam like free birds. They will either come to us or be brought to book during the imminent anti-corruption drive,” he said.
Former BNP state minister Maj (retd) Kamrul Islam applied to make confession on September 18. But the ACC has not yet forwarded his case to the Tac.
“We don’t want to deal with the minions for now. We’d like to focus on the big ones,” Tac member Maj Gen (retd) Manzur Rashid Chowdhury said.
“At present, much of our work concerns corruption by government officials,” he said. “We’ve motivated the low-rank government officials to speak out and are getting stunning stories on graft involving high officials.”
The Tac came down hard on tainted high public officials as none of them are showing up at the commission despite overwhelming evidence of corruption against them.
Back in February, the National Coordination Committee (NCC) to combat corruption and serious crimes had unearthed huge corruption in government departments.
The committee found 135 staffers from the state-run Titas Gas alone who have become billionaires through sheer sleaze.
Two hundred and sixty-six people–including 229 government officials, 22 of their wives and eight low-profile businessmen–have so far applied to the commission to confess to graft.
The Tac completed hearing 126 of them who admitted to having only about Tk 18.10 crore in ill-gotten wealth. About 40 of them deposited Tk 8.73 crore to the state exchequer as of yesterday.
The low-tier government officials who applied to the Tac mostly come from the BTCL, roads and highways department, Titas gas, Desa, BIWTA, registration department, Chittagong Port Authority and Power Development Board.
None from the corruption-infested passport department, Customs, LGED, and Dhaka City Corporation came to voluntarily disclose their corruption.
Of the applicants, 83 applied through the ACC, 167 through the NCC, three through the courts while 13 applied voluntarily.
The commission recently extended for the second time the deadline for clemency pleas by October 30.
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