Bangladesh Nationalist Party Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has announced that BNP’s acting chairman, Tarique Rahman, is set to return to Dhaka, a day after Sheikh Hasina resigned as Prime Minister and left the troubled country. Tarique Rahman, the son of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, is believed to be the man behind the ‘India Out’ campaign that began in the country following Hasina’s return.
“You all know that our leader, Tarique Rahman, has been unjustly exiled abroad due to false cases. He has fully supported this movement, and we have taken steps to bring him back to the country immediately. Insha’Allah, we will be successful,” Alamgir said.
The BNP leader said that it had been decided that Begum Khaleda Zia would also be released immediately. “Those who were imprisoned for political reasons will also be released. Now, in the current situation, all political parties, students, and the public will work together to control it.”
The BNP, which has had a rocky relationship with New Delhi in the past, accuses India of interference in Bangladesh. It also believes that Hasina has been winning elections with the support from New Delhi. The BNP, the main opposition party in Bangladesh, had boycotted the general elections in January.
After Hasina returned to power, the BNP began a campaign, ‘India Out’. The campaign was somewhat similar to what Mohamed Muizzu started in the Maldives.
The movement, which was aimed at boycotting Indian goods, was also targeted at gaining ground against Hasina and appeasing hardliners like Jamaat-E-Islami and Hefazat-e-Islam. Pro-Pakistan Jamaat-E-Islami is a radical group, which wants Sharia law in Bangladesh. Jamaat was barred by the Supreme Court from contesting the general elections. However, with Hasina gone, BNP and Jamaat are waiting to take over the control of Dhaka.
In October 2018, Tarique Rahman was sentenced to life by a Bangladesh court for their role in a plot to assassinate Sheikh Hasina in 2004. An attack on an Awami League rally on August 21, 2004, targeted Hasina, the then Opposition leader when she was about to end a speech in front of thousands of supporters.
In August 2023, Rahman was sentenced to nine years in jail and his wife to three years for accumulating wealth beyond their declared income. The court found them guilty of amassing illegal wealth and concealing information about the wealth, Dhaka Metropolitan Senior Special Judge ruled after the couple’s trial in absentia.
Drug dealings
Arafat Rahman Koko, 44, died of drug overdose on January 27, 2015 in Malaysia. Koko, who was not active in politics, has been living in exile in Thailand and Malaysia since 2008 after the then army-backed government launched corruption cases against him.
He was sentenced to six years in jail and fined $2.5 million in June 2011 for laundering $250 million money through accounts in Singapore between 2004 and 2006, when Zia was in power. Koko was directly involved in drug smuggling from Myanmar and Thailand through the Bay of Bengal.
Hawa Bhaban, drug deals, kickbacks and corruption with impunity
The infamous Hawa Bhaban, the alternative powerhouse of the BNP-led administration in 2001-06, had an immense capacity to abuse power and enjoy impunity, as observed by BNP politicians, US government officials, international rights watchdogs, and the media at the time.
The subsequent government arrested many of the BNP top brass, including the prime minister’s son Tarique Rahman and his cronies, took legal action against them and revealed an extensive level of bribery and extortion involving the party, government and the private sector.
Innumerable journalists were tormented, intimidated and assaulted by state agents and non-state actors on account of their coverage of these issues in the mainstream media.
Several high-ranking BNP members have recently told the media that acting party chairman Tarique Rahman and his “Hawa Bhaban” have been falsely accused of corruption, money laundering, election engineering and patronage of terrorist operations. They further claimed that Tarique was innocent of any corruption and that the media made up the rumours about Hawa Bhaban.
According to the BNP, Hawa Bhaban was the political secretariat of Khaleda Zia, the then-prime minister and party chairperson, on Banani Road 13.
In 2005, for the fifth consecutive year, the non-governmental organization Transparency International named Bangladesh the world’s most corrupt country. The “Corruption Database 2005” released in July 2006 drew a sharp reaction from the government, particularly the two ministries — education and home ministries (police) — that were ranked by the report to have the highest incidence of corruption. They used the media and even parliament to intimidate TIB.
During the tenure, the World Bank cancelled funding for three development projects, blaming government corruption for its decision.
PMO Principal Secretary Kamal Uddin Siddiqui referred to Tarique as “Wind Tunnel”, a translation of the name of his Hawa Bhaban office. “Wind Tunnel has some psycho friends” that he listens to because of his lack of experience, Siddiqui said, describing Tarique as “unsophisticated and dangerous”. He was talking to the then US ambassador on March 14, 2005.
On December 20, 2005, US Charge d’ Affaires in Dhaka Judith A Chammas termed Tarique the “Dark Prince” to describe that he “has the Zia name, political cunning, and mountains of cash generated by his Hawa Bhaban’s collection of tolls from businesses and BNP political aspirants.
“He inspires fear in many people, including BNP backbenchers, self-censoring journalists, business rivals, and parts of the PMO, who see him as ruthless, inexperienced and unworldly.”
In mid-2005, the BNP, on the directives of Tarique, was “increasingly preoccupied with preparing for the election and, it seems, doing whatever it can get away with to win,” according to a cable sent to the State Department from Dhaka on June 20, 2005.
Tarique and his Hawa Bhaban office systematically monitored constituency politics and devised nationwide campaign strategies, a US official said in a cable dated December 4, 2006.
Earlier, he played a key role in forging the breakthrough alliance with the Jamaat-e-Islami and conducting a nationwide survey before the 2001 parliamentary election. And, before the January 22 election of 2007, Tarique had convinced Jatiya Party’s Gen HM Ershad to join the BNP alliance in exchange for the president’s position, according to the US embassy officials.
Khaleda Zia hoped that her alliance would win 180-190 seats, compared to the 220 it held in the eighth parliament, as Gen Ershad had already promised to support her, she told the US ambassador to Dhaka, Patricia Butenis.
“[Khaleda] Zia insisted that, opposition assertions aside, her party has strong support from the Hindu community,” Butenis wrote to Washington on November 2, 2006. She said the BNP had submitted several names among the advisers named by the president.
After the 2001 polls, Tarique’s growing strength within the party — mainly among the new generation leaders — created tensions between the BNP’s old and new guard. Many leaders opposed seeing him as the party chief after Khaleda Zia, but were scared of expressing their views. His countrywide tour of 2004-05 instilled enthusiasm among the youths and helped him pick and back local winners who became part of his BNP clique.
“By selling state minister portfolios to a suddenly ballooning cabinet in 2002 onwards, Tarique produced a coterie of senior figures who owed him their positions while padding his already ample bank accounts,” said US Ambassador Patricia Butenis.
Osman Farruk, the education minister, revealed to an embassy official how Tarique benefited from the portfolio trading.
He said: “The current cabinet initially was to have only 29 members, but after Tarique and some of his colleagues heard about it, they realized there would be little or no room for new ministers. So, Tarique insisted upon an expanded cabinet, including state or junior ministers.”
Finally, the size of the Council of Ministers rose to 60 members, he told a US embassy official on April 23, 2006. It implies the sizeable sum of money Tarique and his close friends had amassed.
Bags full of US dollars
“Like cancer, corruption has spread into every part of Bangladesh’s society and politics, there is unemployment on the one hand and such blatant abuse of power on the other that every government job appointment happens by greasing palms,” he added.
Another US embassy cable said Tarique accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit wealth. Multiple extortion cases pending against him were founded on the testimony of numerous prominent business owners whom he had victimized and exploited.
Tarique helped create and maintain bribery, embezzlement and a culture of corruption, while “his theft of millions of dollars in public money has undermined political stability in this moderate, Muslim-majority nation.”
According to former envoy James F Moriarty, Tarique’s corrupt activities were not limited to the extortion of local companies like Monem Construction, which paid a bribe worth $150 million to Tarique to secure contracts.
A witness who funnelled bribes from Siemens to Tarique and his brother Arafat Rahman Koko, the Dark Prince received a bribe of approximately 2% on all Siemens deals in Bangladesh.
Harbin Company, a Chinese construction company, paid $100 million to Tarique to open an 80MW plant in Tongi. One of Tarique’s cronies received the bribe and transported it to Singapore for deposit with Citibank, Moriarty said.
Former state minister for power Anwarul Kabir Chowdhury said he was against several energy deals with Harbin. He had to step down on October 3, 2006 after he uncovered significant corruption involving Tarique and then state minister for energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain, Chowdhury told a US embassy official the same week.
He said he had asked an intermediary to convey his allegations to the Prime Minister’s Office. “Unfortunately, the PM’s secretary, Khandaker Shahidul Islam, with whom the intermediary spoke, turned out to be part of the group backing Harbin.” He alerted Tarique Rahman to the allegations.
Chowdhury claimed Tarique Rahman then instigated the mob attacks on the power offices and facilities around Dhaka, protesting loadshedding to create a pretext for the prime minister to sack him.
The power plant was essentially useless, having tripped more than 75 times in one year since it was commissioned in October 2005.
To thwart the prosecution of a murder case against Shafiat Sobhan Sanvir, son of the Bashundura Group owner, Tarique accepted a $30.1 million bribe. Tarique had solicited the payment, promising to clear Sanvir of all charges, Moriarty said, quoting ACC sources.
Tarique also succeeded in looting $80 million from the Zia Orphanage Trust Fund account, of which he was a co-signer. He used the funds from the trust for a land purchase in his hometown Bogra and spent money on the 2006 election campaign, said the US envoy.
Despite of these proven corruption histories, Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir has announced that Tarique Rahman, the party’s acting chairman, will be returning to the country very soon.
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