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NCC's anti-graft drive running out of gas

Frequent shift in priorities, poor logistics, polls factor seen as main reasons; frustration grips task force activities

Julfikar Ali Manik
The unprecedented anti-graft crackdown by military-led taskforces under the National Coordination Committee (NCC) to Combat Corruption and Serious Crimes is gradually losing impetus due to numerous complexities and difficulties including frequent shift in priorities.
NCC also started narrowing down its focus of attention as the preparation for holding the stalled 9th parliamentary election is gaining momentum. Against such a backdrop NCC introduced the idea of forming a truth commission as an alternative way for dealing with graft cases and suspects, which would provide an opportunity for corruptionists to admit to their culpabilities and to be penalized monetarily avoiding prolonged legal process and conviction by
courts.
Although the unprecedented drive succeeded in creating an impression that no one is above or beyond the reach of law, some questions were, however, raised about different issues including discrimination in targeting corruption suspects, preparing quality graft cases, and NCC's role in dealing with serious crimes.
Taskforce sources said there were discussions among themselves about a trend of discrimination in targeting graft suspects since many influential persons widely known as corruptionists still remain out of the dragnet, but since that discussion no step to curb the trend has been taken by the high ups, resulting in a declining trend in public faith in the ongoing anti-graft drives, and in a permeating sense of frustration among the taskforce personnel.
Moreover, NCC added a new dimension to the drive by newly bringing into its focus institutional graft, targeting around seven institutions in the first phase, while leaving widely known corrupt institutions and sectors like local government and rural development (LG RD J, local government engineering department (LGED), agriculture, and education still untouched.
The task force sources said fearing an adverse reaction in the bureaucratic apparatus they could not even proceed to file many graft charges as names of many former and incumbent bureaucrats appeared on the list.
The thought of reining in the drive came to NCC as a large scale panic had gripped the people in the wake of it, and because prices of essentials skyrocketed following arrests of businessmen. NCC, which is responsible for evaluating the list of corruption suspects forwarded by different auxiliary agencies and to recommend legal actions against them, is also bringing the number of suspects down to almost a half of the number it had targeted at the time of its launch.
"We had a primary’ list of over 400 graft suspects. But we fear that we might not be able to deal with such a large number due to numerous difficulties. Now we expect to deal with about 200 suspects," an NCC source said.
Recently, Home Adviser Maj Gen (retd) MA Matin, who is also the chairman of NCC, said the top crime fighting authority of the country has no plan to publish any more lists of corruption suspects, although it will take into cognisance serious crimes. He added that NCC is overloaded at the present with investigations and trials of cases filed against the already listed 197 suspects.
NCC sources said if they do not take any more fresh cases, it will take only six more months to adjudicate all the cases it has already taken up. A source said, "Preparing lists of graft suspects is not the only job we do. We also monitor investigations and monitor the progress of prosecutions in graft cases, which we will continue to do."
As NCC was formulated exercising the power of the state of emergency, sources said the committee and its taskforces will become defunct once the emergency regime is withdrawn, putting the responsibility of dealing with graft entirely on the shoulders of the Anticorruption Commission (ACC), adding that an elected government may form another such body if it feels the necessity.
Meanwhile, as the anti-graft drive is losing its steam some defence personnel involved in the drive are getting back to their regular professional training and other activities while the numbers of troops are also being reduced in many army camps, the sources said
adding that the troops will be redeployed during the election.
The military backed caretaker government issued a gazette notification in March last year giving legality to NCC and its task forces making Maj Gen (retd) MA Matin its chairman and Lt Gen Masud Uddin Chowdhury its chief coordinator with retrospective effect from Febru ary 4 o f the same year.
A total of 62 task forces have been working across the country including 40 in Dhaka Metropolitan area to help the ACC combat graft.
According to the gazette notification, each taskforce is supposed to be comprised of five members — an officer from the armed forces with the rank of a major or an equivalent, a Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) officer, a police officer, an ACC officer if the commission feels the service is required, and an officer from the National Board of Revenue (NBR). But the required combination could not be maintained as the ACC and NBR do not have enough efficient officials to spare.
The taskforce field level officials from the armed forces, digging up corruption and irregularities, have also become busy with other duties lately, like voter registration, monitoring of kitchen markets to control price hike of essentials, and disaster management.
Although the idea was that both the ACC and NCC would work in coordination, in reality they never have enjoyed a relationship congenial enough during the crackdown, due to egoistic complexities.
As a result the ACC and NCC did not approve many decisions forwarded to each other, the sources said.
Mentioning the drawbacks of ACC taskforces, the sources added that ACC and NBR officials are not trained well enough, not well equipped, and not even capable of carrying out anti-corruption drives efficiently. The NBR staff do not even have enough experience in filing cases in connection with tax dodging, said the sources.
Immediately after NCC’s formation, staff of the ACC and NBR were
trained at NCC headquarters in Dhaka Cantonment
ACC sources said taskforce officers from the armed forces practically have no experience in pursuing legal processes and many of the evidence provided by them were not even appropriate to be regarded as evidence.
Sources in the taskforces and ACC also said there is a tendency on the part of the military personnel in the agencies to call the shots, and on the other hand there is a latent trend of resistance among the civilian officials in the agencies to be half hearted in cooperating with the military, hampering the pace of work
Many anti-graft drive operators became demoralized and moved away from the initial motivation due to lengthy investigation process, legal complexities and wrangling in higher courts.
The latest shift in the taskforce's priorities also caused the military personnel to lose their dedication to anti-graft operations.
"As a result, the task of conducting investigations of each offence of an individual graft suspect turned into a task of merely looking into his or her assets and incidents of tax dodging. And taskforce officials also gained a tendency of shelving investigations as soon as a case of accumulating illegal wealth and dodging tax is filed against an individual,” a taskforce official said.
Although the very nomenclature of NCC implies that its responsibilities include dealing with serious crimes, it has yet to take any mentionable step in that direction. NCC officials claimed, although there had been initial attempt to define serious crimes, there has been no official disclosure yet in that regard.
Since the inception of NCC, it has so far given input in filing of 227 cases against 119 corruption suspects. Of which die ACC filed 148 cases against 106 persons while NBR filed 29 cases against 28. Police also filed 50 cases against 50 people.
The sources said a total of 45 persons were convicted in the graft
cases supervised by NCC so far, 19 of whom were convicted in cases filed bytheACC,12ofthe cases were filed by NBR, and 14 by the police.
Most of the graft cases filed by ACC with assistance from NCC are related to statement of wealth submitted by the suspects.
A taskforce member wishing anonymity said due to manifold complexities and difficulties sometimes investigations are stuck even after having significant findings and making major progress. He also mentioned that they even could not proceed with some cases for some unknown reasons even after finding credible merits to bring some heavyweights to book
The sources in the ACC and taskforces said the proposed charge sheet in the Gatco case was submitted in November which still remains shelved for reasons unknown awaiting approval from the authorities concerned.
Soon after the proposed charge sheet was submitted, different sources in the ACC and taskforces confirmed the charges while different newspapers carried stories saying 18 more people were named tobeincludedas accused in the case.
The names of the 18 persons published in newspapers and by news agencies include the names of former finance minister M Saifur Rahman, former LGRD and cooper-atives minister Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, former industries minister Matiur Rahman Nizami, former information minister M Shamsul Islam, former agriculture minister MK Anwar, former commerce minister Amir Khasru Mahmud Chowdhury, former health minister Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, former state minister for energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain, and two bureaucrats.
ACC officials after the submission of the proposed charge sheet last year replied to media questions regarding the new suspects, saying several names might be officially added on the charge sheet through the process of investigation and that the proposed charge sheet was being scrutinised at the time.