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NBR goes tough on 3 telcos to realise dues

Staff Correspondent
The National Board of Revenue (NBR) has asked banks to freeze accounts of Banglalink, Robi and Citycell to force the mobile operators to pay a combined amount of Tk 398.03 crore outstanding
FROM PAGE 20 forsixyears.
If the operators do not pay the dues in 15 days, the banks will deduct the amount from the accounts and transfer it to the state coffers, according to an NBR order issued on Wednesday.
Robi was supposed to pay Tk 181.79 crore, BanglalinkTk 168.64 crore and Citycell Tk 47.6 crore in supplementary duty and valued-added tax on SIM for the period between August2006and March2007.
Grameenphone also received such letter but avoided the punishment by paying Tk 348 crore to the tax administrator.
The operators did not pay SIM (subscriber identity module) tax during the period as the High Court issued a verdict against the imposition of SIM tax by the government inJune2005.
According to the NBR letters, the government imposed Tk 900 tax on each SIM in 2005 but a telecom analyst, Abu Saeed Khan, filed a writ petition with the HC against the move.
The HC cancelled the order in August 2006, but the Appellate Division, after an appeal from the NBRin March 2007, reversed the HC order in August this year.
After the recent verdict, the NBR issued the letters to the operators asking them to clear the dues.
The officials of the three mobile operators said they did not get the certified copies of the verdict yet and do not know the details of the order.
“We could not pay the amount as we did not get a certified copy of the judgment,” said Mahtabuddin Ahmed, chief financial officer ofRobi.
Robi urged the NBR in a letter to consider the matter as the judgment copy is still pending, he said.
Zakiul Islam, senior director (regulatory and legal affairs) of Banglalink, said: “We requested NBR to refrain from issuing such letter until we get the verdict copy.”
Mahfuzur Rahman, chief corporate officer of Citycell,
said one of the banks it has an account with informed that it has received an instruction from NBR to freeze the account.
Citycell urged the NBR not to freeze its account before the receipt of verdict copy.
AIRTELSERVED NOTICE The telecom regulator has served a notice to Airtel Bangladesh, asking why its frequency allocation should not be scrapped as the mobile operator has been using unauthorised spectrum in Rajshahi district.
Airtel has been told to give its reply within 30 days.
On receiving the reply, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission will decide what measure it should take against Airtel, said Giashuddin Ahmed, acting chairman of BTRC.
Chris Tobit, chief executive officer and managing director, Airtel Bangladesh, said, "Airtel is compliant to all the policies of the regulatory and the government authorities as per license conditions.
“Currently this issue is under discussion with BTRC and we remain committed to follow any directives laid out by the government."
Using an unauthorised frequency is a punishable offence according to Bangladesh Telecommunication Law, 2001, says the letter posted yesterday on the BTRC's website. The punishment is at least 10 years' imprisonment or a fine of Tk 300 crore or both.
Airtel has been using 200 kilohertz spectrum in two channels beyond the authorised 1,800 megahertz band at the police lines in Keshabpur of Rajshahi town. BTRC detected this on June 22 in a joint inspection with the operator.
"The commission reserves the right and authority to cancel the assignment of the frequency, fully or partially, without prejudice to the right and authority to take any other lawful action," says the letter, referring to the telecom law.
BTRC has the authority to cancel the frequency allocation of any company for non-compliance or violation of license conditions. The operators are allowed to provide service using the allocated frequency only, it reads.
Earlier, the regulator rearranged the 1,800 MHz spectrum band among the mobile operators in May as they had been using random frequency until then.
BTRC also directed the operators to use only allocated spectrums.