The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigating corruption allegation of bdnews24.com Editor-in-Chief Toufique Imrose Khalidi has frozen nine fixed deposit receipts (FDRs) of the news portal and 13 of the chief editor’s personal following a court order.
Altogether, the 22 FDRs are worth Tk 22crore, including Tk24 cores in Khalidi’s name have been uncovered. The decision was made public through a newspaper advertisement published on Thursday.
However, Toufique Imrose Khalidi did not mention the names of the foreign funding, countries or the agencies provided him money for which particular projects.
Apart from these, whether there is any audit report about his wealth beyond known sources of income has been conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General, Supreme Audit Institution of Bangladesh has not been mentioned.
It is known to all that after the completion of such project, the surplus money should go back to the government’s exchequer.
Earlier on December 9 last, a Dhaka court ordered to freeze nine bank accounts of online news portal bdnews24.com and 13 bank accounts of its editor-in-chief Towfiq Imrose Khalidi on charges of amassing wealth beyond known sources of income.
Judge KM Emrul Kayesh of senior special judges’ court of Dhaka on December 1, 2019 gave the order, after Anti-Corruption Commission submitted an application to this end.
ACC Deputy Director Gulshan Anwar Pradhan submitted an application alleging that Khalidi amassed wealth beyond known sources of income.
In the application, Pradhan said Khalidi transferred huge sums of money to bank accounts in his own name and bdnews24.
After hearing, the court ordered to freeze nine fixed deposit (FDR) accounts of bdnews24.com and 13 FDR accounts in Khalidi’s name.
As per the court order, the court has ordered to freeze all the transaction amounting Tk 42 crore in total from 22 accounts in different banks.
Of them, transactions of Tk 18 crore has been stopped by freezing nine accounts in the name of bdnews24.com in two banks while transaction of Tk 24 crore has been stopped by freezing 13 accounts in the name of Khalidi in three banks.
The ACC in its prayer mentioned that the offences committed by Khalidi and bdnews24.com are related to crimes like money laundering.
It should be mentioned that investigation by the ACC into the corruption allegedly committed by Khalidi and his organisation is on.
He was also summoned by the ACC to clarify his position. He already was interrogated once by the ACC investigators on November 26 last year at the ACC headquarters.
The ACC also interrogated Reaz Islam, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of an asset management company named LR Global on November 4 last year.
