Mohammad Shahed alias Shahed Karim, arrested on charges of embezzling money from businesses by boasting influence and recently from patients by issuing fake COVID-19 test reports, has revealed “a lot of information” to the RAB.
Chowdhury Abdullah Al-Mamun, the Rapid Action Battalion director general, briefed the media in Dhaka on Wednesday afternoon about the arrest of the Regent Hospital chairman in Satkhira’s Debhata.
The suspect was trying to cross the border by a boat early in the morning, the RAB said. The law-enforcing agency helicoptered him to Dhaka and raided a house, used by Shahed as his office, in Uttara later. It seized Tk 146,000 fake currency notes during the raid.
“Shahed has said many things, but we can’t tell you about them for the sake of investigation,” Abdullah said.
He said they expect to squeeze out more information from Shahed in interrogation, reports bdnews24.com.
The Regent Group boss used to take photos with influential people and use those in fraudulent activities, the RAB chief said.
Shahed introduced himself as retired or incumbent army officer, media personality, or top government official to carry out the fraud, Abdullah said.
Regent Hospital had signed a deal with the government for treatment of COVID-19 patients when the first coronavirus cases had been confirmed in Bangladesh.
He had recently appeared in TV talk-shows and identified himself as an influential person with links to high-ups in the government and the ruling party.
“He presented himself as a person with clean image, but actually he was cunning,” the RAB chief said.
The Rapid Action Battalion raided the hospital on Jul 6 after receiving complaints that it was issuing fake coronavirus test reports.
It was revealed that the government signed the deal though the hospital had not renewed its licence for years.
Shahed went into hiding after his involvement in other incidents of fraud began coming out following the raid.