ACC okays charge-sheet against Mirza Abbas
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has approved a charge-sheet against five people, including former Housing and Public Works Minister and BNP leader Mirza Abbas, on charge of causing a loss of around Tk 15.52 crore to the government by allocating land to journalists.
The Commission at its regular meeting on Tuesday approved the charge-sheet, ACC Public Relations Officer Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya told UNB.
The other accused, named in the charge-sheet, are former State Minister for Housing and Public Works and BNP leader Alamgir Kabir, former joint secretary Bijon Kanti Sarker, office assistant of National Housing Authority (NHA) M Matiar Rahman and its cashier Mansur Alam.
Mirza Abbas was the Housing and Public works Minister during the allocation of land while Alamgir Kabir was the junior minister to the same ministry.
On March 6, 2014, ACC’s then deputy director Jatan Kumar Roy filed a case against Alamgir Kabir and three others for reportedly causing a loss of around Tk 15.52 crore to the government by allocating land to the journalists at a lower rate.
According to the case statement, Alamgir Kabir sent a letter to the then Prime Minister in 2002 with a request for building a housing area for journalists, writers, artists and cultural activists without receiving any application from them.
In response, the then Prime Minister sent the letter to the Housing and Public Works secretary, asking him to take steps as per the rules. As the matter was under process, Alamgir Kabir directed the Housing and Public Works secretary to allocate the land from a previously designed housing area.
Without taking permission from the ministry, the accused NHA officials, for their personal gains, allocated seven acres of land in city’s Mirpur area to the Dhaka Journalists Cooperatives Limited at only Tk 3.39 crore against the “market value” of Tk 19 crore, violating the amended housing policy of 1993.
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