The Anti-Corruption Commission on Tuesday approved the filing of a case against former director general of the Bangladesh Post Office, Sudhangshu Shekhar Bhadra, and deputy postmaster general, Mostaq Ahmed, on charges of embezzling money out of government procurement.
ACC assistant director Abul Kalam Azad filed the case with its integrated district office of Dhaka-1, said ACC deputy director [public relations] Aktarul Islam.
According to the case statement, Sudhangshu and Mostaq served as project director and deputy project director respectively for the 鈥楶ost e-Centre for Rural Community鈥� project.
The two officials have been accused of embezzling and wasting over Tk聽15 crore during the procurement of 500 HPE Servers and UPS units. Despite the significant expenditure, the equipment was never utilised, leading to a loss of public fund.
An investigation conducted by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology in 2017, supported by witness testimonies, revealed that contracts for purchasing the servers, UPS units, and other electronic equipment were made with the government-owned telephone industry. The equipment was bought to distribute among post offices at the district and upazila levels.
A three-member investigation team, formed to probe the allegations of wastage and embezzlement, conducted random inspections at post offices and verified stock registers.
They found that the project, completed in June 2017, had significant discrepancies. The supply invoices indicated that some goods were delivered nearly two years after the project鈥檚 official completion.
The responsible employees, including the concerned postmasters, cited a lack of training and knowledge on how to operate the equipment as the reason for it remaining unused.
The report further highlighted that despite Tk聽6 crore being allocated for training purposes, no training sessions were conducted.