Chief admits crisis of public trust in ACC

The Anti-Corruption Commission chairman Iqbal Mahmood on Saturday admitted that the commission has a crisis of public trust as most of the steps, about 70 per cent, taken by the graft watchdog were against petty suspects.

Netting the big corruption suspects is tough as the ACC ‘does not want to backtrack after taking any initiative’, the ACC chief said while addressing a seminar at the National Press Club.

Rights organisation Human Rights and Peace for Bangladesh organised the seminar on the role of judiciary and lawyers in preventing corruption.

Responding to a query over a remark he has recently made about public servants’ mistake in good faith, Iqbal Mahmood emphasised that he never said that corruption in good faith was not an offence.

He said that public servants had an important role in curbing corruption as the bureaucracy is a big matter (important organ of the state).

‘We have a shortage of capacity as the ACC has no more than 300 investigators. …It’s a problem to carry out an investigation against a secretary by a deputy assistant director,’ he said.

‘If someone asks me that how many skilled officers I have, I have no answer…,’ he added.

He disclosed that every report submitted to his office by the ACC investigators was flawed.

‘No investigator completes [his/her] investigation in due time. If the ACC is to take action against its officers, all of them will face action,’ he went on.

About going for small fishes, the ACC chairman said that the commission goes by a philosophy in this regard.

‘Eighty per cent graft victims live in rural areas and they are victimised by petty corrupt people,’ he said.

He revealed that 10 people of the ruling party are now under the ACC scanner while some 15 leaders form another party and 25 businessmen were undergoing ACC inquiry, investigation or prosecution.

Supreme Court lawyer and anti-corruption and rights activist Manzil Morshed pointed out that of late there had been a trend seen with the ACC of going after petty graft suspects while ‘big fishes’ were keeping way beyond the ACC net.

He categorically mentioned that the graft watchdog had failed to take necessary action against the people involved in the BASIC Bank scam.

Former Awami League government’s law minister Abdul Matin Khasru commented that curbing corruption would not be possible if the trials of the graft cases were not carried out in a speedy manner.

He suggested that both the judiciary and the ACC needed to enhance their capacities.

Former Supreme Court judge Md Nizamul Huq and Supreme Court lawyer M Amirul Islam, among others, spoke in the seminar.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net