ACC chief refutes WB report

Ghulam Rahman, the outgoing Chairman of the Anti-Corruption Commission, said yesterday the World Bank had failed to substantiate the corruption allegations against the Prime Minister's Adviser, Mashiur Rahman, over the Padma bridge project.
The global lender had earlier insisted that Mashiur had to be on leave for the conduct of a fair probe but the WB didn't mention his name in its final report on the Padma bridge corruption allegations, said Rahman.
The ACC chief was speaking at a press briefing at the ACC headquarters in the capital.
The WB maintained that ex-communications minister Abul Hossain had to be implicated in the corruption case on the ground that being the chief of the ministry, he must have been involved in the corruption conspiracy, said Rahman.
Terming the WB's claim irrational, he said the chief of an organisation or a ministry could not be held responsible for everything that happened there.
“The commission's probe into the corruption allegations is still going on, and Abul Hossain will be indicted if any proof of corruption is found against him.”
The ACC chief's observations came a day after the WB uploaded on its website the final report of its external panel.
The panel expressed dissatisfaction with Abul's exclusion from the list of corruption suspects despite “evidence of his involvement”.
WB Country Director Johannes Zutt handed over the report to the finance minister on June 11.
Rahman termed the current anti-corruption law insufficient, and said it “does not allow the ACC to arrest anyone or seize anything during an investigation.
“As a result, criminals often manage to escape, and evidence gets destroyed.”
The lengthy process of the judicial system had made the ACC a “toothless tiger”, said Rahman, whose four-year stint as ACC chairman ends on June 23.
ABUL'S STATEMENT
Meanwhile, Syed Abul Hossain, in a statement, said the WB panel's final report had nothing new and contained no proof of a corruption conspiracy.
Maintaining his innocence, he said the report proved that the WB had irrationally pressed the ACC and the government to implicate him in the corruption case.