ACC approves graft charges against Khoka

The Anti-Corruption Commission yesterday approved a charge sheet against former Dhaka City Corporation mayor Sadeque Hossain Khoka and three others in a 2012 case filed over corruption in a multi-storey car park project.

Other charge-sheeted accused are Mansur Ahmed, the then executive engineer of DCC; Mafizur Rahman, the then acting executive engineer, and Aminur Rahman Chowdhury, DCC deputy assistant engineer of the time.

ACC Deputy Director Harun-ur-Rashid filed the case with Shahbagh Police Station in March 2012, accusing seven people, including Khoka.

Three other accused were exempted from the charge as they had not been found involved in the graft, said a top ACC official.

The corruption took place between 2007 and 2009 and caused a Tk-827 crore loss to the national exchequer, according to the case statement. The DCC authorities had made a deal with Nirman Trading to build a car park on receiving a plot of 27-katha in Dilkusha from Bangladesh Jute Mills Corporation (BJMC), the complainant said.

As per the agreement, the construction firm should own 70 percent of the project and the government the rest but the government's share was reduced to 25 percent without following the legal procedure, said ACC Deputy Director Mohammad Zahangir Alam who is investigating the case. 

Meanwhile, Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) yesterday took control over five floors of the 27-storey building at Dilkusha.

DSCC owns the five floors, including two basements, where some offices, including a newspaper office, were set up illegally, said Mohammad Atul Mondol, executive magistrate of DSCC.

He said DSCC would set up its zone-2 office in the building today.

The building might have been constructed without the permission of the committee of the Roads and Highways Division, which looks after the security of key point installation across the country. An investigation is going on in this regard, the DSCC official added.