AL lawmaker charged with power abuse
Staff Correspondent
The Bureau of Anti-corruption (Bac) yesterday pressed charges against former state minister for jute and Awami League lawmaker AKM Jahangir Hossain for allegedly forcing jute ministry officials to rent his wife's house for the textile ministry's liquidation cell.Bac said in the charge sheet that renting the house, some 15 miles from the Secretariat, caused loss to the public exchequer. It also filed a case against three others including two high officials of Bangladesh Jute Research Institute (BJRI) for alleged misappropriation of Tk 3.25 lakh. They are Mohammad Yar Hossain, proprietor of Access Computers & Equipment, Dr SM Ilias, former project director of Agricultural Research Management Project (ARMP) and director general of BJRI, and Abu Bakr, a retired captain and additional director (admin and finance) of the ARMP. The case said the BJRI bought computers and related equipment from Access Computers & Equipment but the software supplied by the computer firm was not original. An investigation by Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology found that all software including Office 2000 Professional, McAfee Anti-virus Utility, Data Recovery Utility, Bangla interface Soft with spell check and others were pirated. Tk 3,24,850 was paid to the firm for the pirated software. Mohammad Manzoor Morshed, officer of Bac task force-1, filed the case with Tejgaon Police Station yesterday.
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