ACC to submit report against Hasina in bridge toll case

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) is scheduled to submit its investigation report to the Dhaka Metropolitan Senior Special Judge's Court on Sunday (September 20) regarding a high-profile corruption case alleging massive financial losses to the state in connection with Meghna-Gomti Bridge toll collection contracts.

Ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, along with 16 others including former ministers, senior bureaucrats, and private company executives, have been accused of abuse of power, irregularities, and creating a financial loss of nearly Tk 309 crore to the national exchequer.

Previously, on June 23, the court, presided over by Acting Judge Mohammad Alamgir, had set September 20 as the new deadline for the submission of the investigation report, after the ACC failed to meet the original deadline.

According to case files filed by the ACC on October 12, 2025, the accused are charged under sections 409, 420, and 109 of the Penal Code and section 5(2) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947.

Prominent names among the 17 accused include former ministers Amir Hossain Amu, Tofail Ahmed, Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain, Obaidul Quader, and Anisul Huq; former State Minister M.A. Mannan; former Secretary M.A.N. Siddique; Additional Secretary Md. Faruque Jalil; Deputy Secretary Mohammad Shafiqul Karim; and engineers Md. Firoz Iqbal, Ibnul Alam Hasan, Md. Aftab Hossain Khan, and Md. Abdus Salam. Furthermore, Munir Uz Zaman Chowdhury, Managing Director of CNS Limited, along with directors Selina Chowdhury and Ikram Iqbal, have been implicated.

The charges originate from a 2016 decision where toll collection responsibilities for the Meghna-Gomti Bridge were awarded to Computer Network Systems (CNS) Limited through a single-source tender process. The ACC alleges that an ongoing competitive tendering process was deliberately canceled in order to award the contract directly to CNS Limited without any transparent discussion.

According to the complaint, instead of a fixed management fee, CNS was granted a service charge of 17.75 per cent of the total bridge tolls collected. This arrangement reportedly allowed CNS Limited to bill the state for approximately Tk 489 crore. Case documents provide a cost comparison, noting that between 2010 and 2015, previous toll management services on the same bridge under MBEL-ATT had cost only slightly over Tk 15 crore. Another three-year contract for similar technology was recently awarded for the 2022-2025 period to UDC Construction Limited for Tk 67 crore, which would project to roughly Tk 112 crore over a five-year period.

Based on these comparisons, the ACC asserts that the decision to grant the non-competitive, single-source percentage-based contract to CNS Limited resulted in a calculated financial loss of roughly Tk 309 crore to the state.

-SA