NBR files GD against Jamuna Group chief

The National Board of Revenue yesterday filed a general diary against the owner of Jamuna Group and a journalist of the daily Jugantor, owned by the group.

In the GD lodged with Ramna Police Station, Nurul Islam Babul, chairman of the business group, and Helal Uddin, senior reporter of the newspaper, were accused of publishing "false and fabricated" reports about the NBR chief.

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The complaint was filed primarily to stop the Bangla daily from demeaning the tax authority and its chairman Md Nojibur Rahman, the NBR said in a press release.

The move followed a special meeting of the NBR, chaired by its chief, in response to a series of "impolite, libelous, false and fabricated" reports published in the Jugantor and aired on the Jamuna Television, owned by Babul, it said.

The daily carried "a series of seven reports against the NBR chairman" between October 29 and December 9.

"The contents of the news items were false, baseless and motivated. In some cases, facts were distorted, and in the others, the reports were motivated."

Such activities were aimed at frustrating the government and the NBR, said the tax authority.

Stating that Babul "has dodged a huge amount of tax", the press release said there were pending cases against Jamuna Group, and the NBR chief had recently taken steps to settle those.

If the court verdicts in the cases went in favour of the government, Jamuna Group would have to deposit more than Tk 600 crore in the state coffer.

Fearing this, Babul made Helal Uddin to write the "fabricated, imaginary and vindictive" reports, the NBR press release added.

Contacted, the Jamuna Group owner denied the allegations, and said, "The NBR chairman initiated investigations against me, my family members and my companies and collected information about our bank accounts, but found nothing."

He said he would write an open letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina explaining that the Jugantor had published the reports about the NBR chairman "for the sake of the country, its 16 crore people, and revenue collection".

"If any sentence of our news items is untrue, we will accept whatever punishment you [the PM] give us," said Babul told The Daily Star last night.