Nazmul Islam, the managing director of Grameen Telecom, will not be able to wriggle out of accountability for the embezzlement scandal that has rocked the company, according to police.
The Anti-Corruption Commission has opened an investigation into Grameen Telecom following a complaint lodged by the Department of Inspection for Factories and Establishment under the labour ministry, reports bdnews24.com.
The allegations include the embezzlement of funds from the employee welfare account and an attempt to launder nearly Tk 30 billion.
The anti-graft agency has since interrogated Nazmul and two other officials in connection with the case.
Mainul Islam, vice president of the Grameen Telecom Worker-Employee Union, is in police custody following his arrest on charges of breach of trust, fraud and embezzlement, according to Harun-or-Rashid, chief of Dhaka Metropolitan Police's Detective Branch.
The union's President Md Kamruzzaman and General Secretary Firoz Mahmud Hasan gave "confessional statements" after their arrests.
Speaking at a media briefing on Sunday, Harun revealed that Nazmul was the authorised signatory to the settlement account from which the funds were "dubiously withdrawn". As such, the company's MD "cannot deny responsibility", according to him.
The additional commissioner said police will decide whether to interrogate Nazmul after discussing the matter with higher-ups.
On Jul 4, the union’s Finance Secretary Mohammad Aktaruzzaman initiated the case with the Mirpur Police Station, alleging that Grameen Telecom Company retained workers on rolling contracts which never led to permanent employment, according to Harun.
Although the Labour Act 2006 requires all companies to set aside 5.0 per cent of their annual profit for disbursement among workers, Grameen Telecom did not do so, arguing that the "workers were not permanently employed" and the "company didn’t make enough profit".
The company suspended 99 workers in October 2020 after they raised some legal demands.
The employees filed around 190 cases with the High Court and the Labour Court to challenge their suspension and raised other allegations, including contempt of court, at different times.
But police found that the cases were "secretly withdrawn" along with irregularities with the payment of workers, according to Harun.
On Apr 27, Grameen Telecom and the Grameen Telecom Worker-Employee Union signed a contract to open a settlement account with the Gulshan Branch of Dhaka Bank.
The company deposited around Tk 4.37 billion to that account, signifying 5.0 per cent of its profits from 2010 to 2022, with 4.0 per cent interest on top of it.
Grameen Telecom MD Nazmul was made the account's mandatory signatory, while the union president and the general secretary were the other signatories. All payments for workers were supposed to be drawn from that account.
According to the contract, the settlement account could be used to disburse workers’ payments and 5.0 per cent advance tax only. But the company management, with the help of some union leaders, transferred Tk 262 million to the worker union's account with Dutch-Bangla Bank on May 17, 2020, and May 25, 2022.
There were at least three signatories to the worker union account: its president, the general secretary and the finance secretary.
Mainul "confessed" to his involvement in the scam during preliminary interrogation, according to Harun.
He said Grameen Telecom higher-ups had lured him and his colleagues to withdraw the cases against the company. They also threatened to harm them if they failed to do so.
The authorities pushed them to pay a staggering Tk 160 million in fees to the lawyer of the employee union.
Like other workers, Mainul took Tk 40 million he was legally entitled to but embezzled another Tk 30 million found in his accounts with Dutch-Bangla Bank and BRAC Bank.
His colleagues, the president and the secretary of the union, also embezzled a large amount of money.
Altogether, the three of them cheated the workers and employees of the company out of Tk 90 million, the police officer said.