Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) has exonerated former minister Syed Abul Hossain from allegations of corruption in the Padma Bridge mega project.
The graft watchdog on Tuesday officially cleared his name from the allegations in a letter sent to the cabinet secretary.
In 2012, the World Bank (WB) raised allegations of corruption in the tender process of the mega infrastructure project.
The ACC probe into the allegations were later found to be wrong.
The case, initiated by the ACC, named seven as accused including Syed Abul Hossain.
Almost six years after the charge sheet of the case was filed in 2014, ACC officially cleared the former minister’s name from the corruption allegations.
The World Bank, Jica, Asian Development Bank and the Islamic Development Bank were the initial investors of the mega project. The WB had pledged $1.2b of the project cost.
In a statement issued on June 29, 2012, the WB said that it had credible evidence corroborated by a variety of sources which points to a high-level corruption conspiracy among Bangladeshi government officials, SNC-Lavalin executives, and private individuals in connection with the Padma Multipurpose Bridge Project.
The WB demanded that the government took serious action against the high-level corruption they had unearthed.
On December 17, 2012, the ACC filed the case of “conspiracy for corruption in the Padma Bridge project” against seven people, including Mosharraf Hossain Bhuiyan.
They kept the names of former communications minister Syed Abul Hossain and former state minister Abul Hasan as suspects.
A Toronto court later cleared two former officials of engineering giant SNC-Lavalin and a Bangladeshi-Canadian businessman in 2017, from the charge of planning to bribe Bangladeshi officials to secure a consultancy contract in the Padma Bridge project, in which the World Bank was one of the financiers.
The investigation on Bangladeshi side, done by the Anti-Corruption Commission, also dismissed the allegations, which were raised by the World Bank.
