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Award Scam

Foreign friends to get new crest

Staff Correspondent
Following widespread condemnation, the government has finally decided to give new crests with an alloy of gold and silver to the foreign friends, who contributed to the country's Liberation War, since the previous ones were found sub-par.
The liberation war affairs ministry has said this in reply to a legal notice issued by Supreme Court lawyer Manzill Murshid.
Advocate Manzill told The Daily Star yesterday that he received the reply on Monday and it said the government has formed a parliamentary sub-committee to investigate the allegation of tampering the awards.
After getting the report from the committee, the ministry will recover the money the supplier companies took for the crests, and then crests will be produced with stipulated amount of gold and silver and sent to the recipients through Bangladesh missions abroad, he said, citing from the letter.
On May 19, the lawyer filed a writ petition with the High Court seeking its directive on the government to give new crests to foreign friends and institutions. The petition is now pending with the H C.
Earlier, Manzill had sent a legal notice to the ministry asking it to replace the tainted crests in a bid to restore the dignity and image of the country.
The Awami League-led grand alliance government between 2011 and 2013 awarded shields to 338 foreign
friends and organisations for their outstanding contribution to country's Liberation War in 1971.
According to the policy, every shield was supposed to have 22.5 grams of gold and 339 grams of silver. But Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institute (BSTI) tested a shield in 2012 and found that the shield only had 2.363 grams ofgold and 466.237 gram of brass instead of silver.
After this anomaly was published in media recently, the liberation war
affairs ministry formed a probe committee on April 7 to identify the people involved in the scam.
The committee found that the government was robbed of around Tk 7.04 crore through these sub-par shields. The probe body held former state minister for liberation war affairs AB Tajul Islam and 12 others of his ministry responsible for the fraudulence.
Interestingly, it’s none other than AB Tajul Islam who is heading the
parliamentary committee, which is probingthe incident now.
Amongthe 12 government employees, secretary of the ministry Golam Mustafa and senior assistant secretary Babul Mia have been made officer on special duty (OSD) while former joint secretary Abul Quasem Talukdar had already been made OSD over issuance of fake freedom fighter certificates.
Besides, the Anti-Corruption Commission has decided to investigate the allegations of impurity in the