State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam has obtained ten documents and papers about how much money Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP)-Jamaat paid to the US lobby firms over the last five years. The state-run television and radio
broadcast the news live from the Jatiya Sangsad, instantly raising a serious question about BNP’s activities among the country’s other political parties and people from all walks of life as well.
Shahriar Alam also told journalists that BNP signed three agreements with US-based lobbyist firms in the last several years, estimating that the party spent at least $3.75 million. Reportedly, the party hired a lobbyist -- Akin Company Associates in the United States in 2015. BNP signed the agreement using its Nayapaltan office address. It paid 1.5 lakh dollars to the firm at the beginning as advance money and gave 50,000 dollars every month. A total of nearly two million dollars were paid to the associates in three years. Therefore, the BNP should be asked whether the money it paid to lobbyists was given with Bangladesh Bank’s approval. Besides, the government will also have to investigate the source of party’s lobbying money that it spent to campaign against Bangladesh.
The government must deal with the issue
with an iron hand so that no one would dare
spread propaganda against the country
Meanwhile, the foreign ministry in a letter requested the Bangladesh Bank to check, recheck and cross check the financial transactions made by BNP to recruit lobbyists in the United States. Besides, the ministry has also requested the EC to ensure whether the party mentioned this transaction to their statements of income and expenditure.
The party was born in cantonment and its founder Ziaur Rahman had captured power through firearms. Since its foundation, BNP has been doing politics in the country with support from anti-liberation forces and its foreign lobbyists who had opposed the country’s liberation war in 1971. The party and defeated forces had chosen the path of conspiracy against the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. The party is now out to hatch conspiracies against Bangabandhu’s daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
After being isolated from the mass people of the country and finding no way, the party is now engaged in disseminating negative propaganda against the country and the government in many ways. And the party’s leaders are also deliberately making misleading remarks and spreading propaganda against Bangladesh to hinder the country’s ongoing development and progress. They have also become desperate to create barriers in export trade through appointing lobbyist firms in many countries, including the United States. The government must deal with the issue with an iron hand so that no one would dare spread such defamatory propaganda against the country like in the past.