Over two dozens of Anti-Corruption Commission officials are facing departmental and external investigations over their alleged links to various corruption and irregularities.

There are allegations that the officials have accumulated illegal wealth by giving advantages to corruption suspects during ACC investigations and some of the officials have realised illegal benefits from their own office and other government and private firms.

 
Following a request of the recently reconstituted commission led by ACC chairman Mohammad Moinuddin Abdullah, the National Security Intelligence has started collecting information on about 25 officials of the commission.

The commission is also conducting departmental investigations against most of them.

Several ACC officials told New Age that at least 3 directors, 10 deputy directors, 8 assistant directors and 5 deputy assistant directors were facing the internal and external probes.

A good number of employees, some recently retired officials of the commission and some outsiders who have close links with some current and former of ficials of the commission are also facing probes, they said.

They said that they were expecting that the NSI would soon submit a report to the commission on several ACC officials.

Immediately after Moinuddin Abdullah, a former bureaucrat, had taken charge as ACC chairman in March, the commission formed a seven-member committee to check internal corruption and ensure transparency and accountability of commission officials and employees.

The committee has recently submitted a ‘confidential report’ to the commission, recommending some reforms, including an enhanced surveillance on ACC officials, said an ACC commissioner.

He said that the committee did not give any names in the report but mentioned some ways of unethical practices by a section of commission officials.

ACC officials said that as commission investigators have an authority to summon or serve notices to any person as part of any investigation, a section of the investigators sometimes abused the scope by serving notices to some innocent people linking them with corruption suspects.

In this way, the section of investigators creates pressure on the innocent people so that they give undue advantages to the investigators, they said.

Besides, some investigators also submit faulty or incomplete probe reports intentionally to give advantages to corruption suspects in exchange of financial benefits.

Commission secretary Mohammad Anwar Hossain Howlader in an order on August 12 said that the commission would consider the submission of ‘incomplete’ probe reports ‘intentionally’ by its officials as corruption.

The commission will take legal actions against the officials concerned for such submission of incomplete inquiry and investigation reports to the commission, the order said.

The order also said that no inquiry or investigation officer or team could be changed without logical reasons when a probe was underway.

‘Officials will face departmental cases for their inefficacy,’ it said.

When asked about investigation against ACC officials, commission chairman Moinuddin Abdullah on Saturday told New Age, without sharing details, that the commission had taken some measures to ensure transparency and accountability in the commission.

‘We think that accountability inside the Anti-Corruption Commission is a must. We are taking various steps to make the commission transparent,’ Moinuddin said.

Welcoming the ACC move, Transparency International Bangladesh executive director Iftekharuzzaman told New Age that the ACC should take exemplary actions against corrupt people in the commission.

‘Taking departmental action like transferring one official from one station to another is not enough. The anti-graft watchdog must be corruption-free to prevent corruption in other agencies,’ he said.

Iftekhar also said that the process must not victimise any innocent and skilled official.