The Anti-Corruption Commission on Sunday filed a case against Gazipur City Corporation鈥檚 former mayor Md Jahangir Alam and its former chief accounts officer Golam Kibria on charges of embezzling Tk聽7,500 crore and laundering the money abroad.
The anti-graft agency also filed two separate cases against former Chattogram Hill Tracts affairs minister Bir Bahadur U Shwe Sing and his wife May Hla Prue on charges of amassing wealth worth Tk聽12.52 crore beyond known sources of income.
ACC director general (prevention) Akhtar Hossain at a press briefing said that the commission approved the case against the former Gazipur city mayor.
According to the ACC findings, Jahangir and other accused Kibria created fake tenders and bills in the name of the city corporation to award contracts to contracting firms they owned.
Through this way, they embezzled and laundered about Tk 7,500 crore from development and revenue funds of the city corporation, according to the findings.
Seven months after Jahangir was suspended from the post of mayor, the ACC launched an inquiry into these allegations.
It was stated in the allegations that Jahangir had embezzled crores of taka through irregularities in various development projects, opened fake bank accounts under the name of the city corporation and withdrew funds from them.
Apart from this, the ACC also stated that between February 25, 2020, and December 22, 2021, several crores of taka were deposited and withdrawn from these fake accounts in the name of the city corporation, which Jahangir misappropriated.
Jahangir was elected mayor of the Gazipur City Corporation in the 2018 elections as a candidate of the Awami League. However, in September 2021, allegations arose against him for making 鈥榦ffensive鈥� remarks about Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding president of the country, and the martyrs of the Liberation War during a private discussion.
Amid protests and dissatisfaction from a section of the Awami League people, his party membership was revoked. He was subsequently removed from the post of mayor.
U Shwe Sing, also a former lawmaker from the Bandarban constituency, was sued on charges of amassing illegal wealth worth Tk聽9.17 crore and suspicious transactions of Tk聽58.40 crore in his 13 bank accounts.
A case was filed against May Hla Prue on charges of amassing illegal wealth worth Tk聽3.35 crore and suspicious transactions of Tk 15.58 crore in her six bank accounts.
The ACC started an inquiry into allegations of amassing illegal wealth against U Shwe Sing after the fall of the authoritarian Awami League regime on August 5, 2024, amid a student-led mass uprising.
