Sixteen senior National Board of Revenue officials were brought under the Anti-Corruption Commission scrutiny in the past five days in the aftermath of protests by NBR officials over the ongoing revenue sector reforms.
The government on Wednesday also sent three NBR members, Alamgir Hossain, Hossain Ahmed and Abdur Rouf, and commissioner Md Shabbir Ahmed into retirement. On Tuesday, the NBR suspended temporarily Chattogram customs commissioner Zakir Hossain, showing disruption by him in import and export operations at the customs house as the reason.
On Thursday, the Anti-Corruption Commission initiated an inquiry into allegations of amassing illegal wealth through corruption and irregularities against five officials of the National Board of Revenue.
The five officials are Kazi Mohammad Ziauddin, commissioner of the customs,聽 excise and VAT of Dhaka East, Md Kamruzzaman, commissioner at the Benapole land port, Md Mamun Mia, deputy tax commissioner of the circle-7 in Rajshahi, Sehela Siddika, additional tax commissioner at the Income Tax Intelligence Unit, and Lokman Ahmed, tax inspector at the tax zone-2 of Dhaka.
鈥榃ith them, a total of 16 NBR officials came under the ACC probe in the past five days over allegations of various corruption in the revenue sector,鈥� said ACC deputy director for public relations Md Aktarul Islam.
鈥楾here are allegations against the NBR officials that they facilitated large-scale tax evasion by accepting hefty bribes from taxpayers while they also reduced tax liabilities in exchange for personal gains, causing the government to lose revenue annually,鈥� he said.
ACC director general (prevention) Akhtar Hossain said that there were also allegations that taxpayers were often forced to spend at least half of refund amount in bribes or gifts to secure the refund in the case of submitting excess tax in advance tax.
Earlier on June 29, the ACC launched an inquiry into allegations of corruption against six NBR officials, including leaders of the NBR Reforms Unity Council under which tax officials held various protest programmes against the ordinance that spit the NBR into two divisions and the revenue board chairman.
The six officials were Hasan Muhammad Tarek Rikabdar, additional commissioner, Mirza Ashiq Rana, additional tax commissioner, Mohammad Morshed Uddin Khan, joint tax commissioner, AKM Badiul Alam, member (income tax policy), Mirza Ashiq Rana, additional tax commissioner, Monalisa Shahrin Sushmita, deputy tax commissioner, and Sadhan Kumar Kundu, additional commissioner.
The ACC decision came hours after the interim government in a statement warned the protesting NBR officials about stern action.
Amid the warning, the protesting NBR officials withdrew their protest programmes on June 29 evening.
On July 1, ACC also initiated inquiry against five more officials of the NBR.
The officials are Abdul Rashid Mia, additional commissioner, Lutful Azim, member of the NBR, Mohammad Alamgir Hossain, former additional director general of the Central Intelligence Cell, Md Shihabul Islam, deputy tax commissioner, and Md Tariq Hassan, joint commissioner.
NBR officials had been in protest since April 29 against the government鈥檚 move to split the revenue board into two divisions.
They formed a the NBR Reforms Unity Council following the promulgation of the Revenue Policy and Revenue Management Ordinance 2025 by the interim government on May 12.
The ordinance dissolved the revenue board and split it into two divisions under the finance ministry to modernise tax administration and boost revenue collection.
Since the issuance of the ordinance, the NBR officials had held a series of sit-ins, pen-down strikes, and non-cooperation with the NBR chairman in May and June.
At the peak of the movement on June 28 and June 29, all operations at customs houses, VAT offices and income tax offices came to a halt due to their 鈥榗omplete shutdown鈥� programme.
