Govt’s corruption got 'global recognition': Rizvi
The corruption of the incumbent government has received international recognition through the sentencing of Bangladeshi lawmaker Mohammad Shahid Islam, alias Kazi Papul, by a Kuwaiti court in a bribery case, allged BNP in a statement.
“This (Papul's conviction) is a matter of shame for the country. The current government can't avoid the responsibility either in this regard," said BNP senior joint secretary general Ruhul Kabir Rizvi in a press briefing at the party's Nayapaltan central office.
He said, “MPs like Papul would not have dared to indulge in reckless corruption without their (govt's) patronage.”
Earlier on Thursday, a Kuwaiti court sentenced Papul and four others to four years in jail on a charge of bribing Kuwaiti officials with millions of dollars to recruit Bangladeshi workers and get contracts for his company.
The court also fined them 1.9 million dinars, reports Kuwait Times. The MP is also an accused in two other cases on charges of human trafficking and money laundering.
The BNP leader said the Anti-Corruption Commission did not take proper action against Papul's wife, daughter and sister-in-law despite having specific evidence about their corruption of hundreds of crores of taka.
About the fresh report of the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index 2020, Rizvi said Bangladesh has been placed at the 12th spot from the bottom, two notches up from the previous index.
He said the report cites widespread corruption in Bangladesh's health sector amid the coronavirus pandemic as one of the reasons behind the rise in corruption in the country. "We've long been saying this repeatedly earlier."
The BNP leader alleged that corruption has turned epidemic in the country because of the lack of democracy in the country.
Rizvi said though the elections of Chattogram City Corporations were held by using the 'digital vote robbery machine', EVMs. And so the returning officer took 10 hours to announce the results.
He alleged that the returning officers announced the results that were sent by "the Prime Minister from Gonobhaban at 1:45am".
"It shouldn't take more than one or two hours to announce the results of the elections that were held using the EVMs. After the vote robbery, it took a long time to settle the count and share of the votes. After a lot of calculations, they have shown that only 22 per cent of the votes have been cast in the elections," the BNP leader added.