NBR freezes bank accounts of Samrat, MP Shawon

The National Board of Revenue on Tuesday took the decision to freeze the bank accounts of Nurunnabi Chowdhury Shawon, MP, Juba League Dhaka South City president Ismail Hossain Chowdhury Samrat, their wives as well as scan their transactions.

The NBR’s Central Intelligence Cell also asked banks and financial institutions to provide detailed information about all the   transactions carried out by former Public Works Department chief engineer Mohammad Rafiqul Islam and its former additional chief engineer Md Abdul Hye, Juba League leaders GK Shamim, his wife and mother and Juba League leader Khalid Mahmud Bhuiyan.

The CIC also asked all the banks and financial institutions to freeze the bank accounts of Shamim, his wife, mother, his business firm GKB & Co and Khalid.

The NBR took the moves after illegal casinos were discovered at the capital’s major sporting clubs  leading to arrests of two top Juba League leaders involved in running the gambling dens.

At least seven firms that imported gadgets and equipment for the illegal casinos since 2009, have been identified by NBR’s Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate.

None of importers are from the sporting clubs from where the illegal casinos were operated until the last week when the RAB cracked down on the gambling dens.

During preliminary investigations, the CIID detected evasion of import duties on roulette game tables, roulette game sets, poker sets, poker game chips, shooter ladder games, casino war games, casino coins and chips.

On Tuesday, the CIID asked banks to provide detailed information about the letters of credit opened by Nenad Trade International, AM Islam and Sons, Pushpita Enterprise, and A3 Trade International of Dhaka, for importing the gadgets and equipment for the illegal casinos.

The CIID officials told New Age that the banks would be asked to provide these information about Six Sea Corporation, New Hope Agrotech Bangladesh Ltd and Best Tycoon (BD) Enterprise Ltd.

NBR officials said that the CIC would issue letters today asking banks and financial institutions to freeze the bank accounts of Shawon, Samrat, their wives and to provide information about the transactions they had carried out.

They said that the CIC would collect detailed information about the transactions they carried out to scrutinise their tax payment status and sources of assets.

The former PWD engineers are under the scanner as they had allegedly taken  hundreds of crore of Taka as bribe from GK Shamim to help him bag tenders.

During the crackdown on the illegal casinos, RAB seized casino equipment,  gambling instruments, liquor and huge cash from the major sporting clubs and detained Shamim, Khalid and others

for their involvement in running the casinos illegally.

NBR officials said that the CIID would  also find out to whom the importers sold the casino gadgets and instruments since 2009 and these deals increased since 2016.

The importers declared the casino gadgets as gaming machines with duty up to 60.73 per cent, to import by air, sea and land from mainly Hong Kong, China and India, according to CIID.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net