Quick notes on the Trust Bank-gate story

Good post. I think line 5 of point 2 should read 66 lakhs, not 66 crores. (Fell free to delete comment.)

Saif, on point #1, the Bangladesh Bank regulations state that “the total amount of the loan facilities extendable to a Director or to his relatives should not exceed 50% of the paid-up value of the shares of that bank held in Director’s own name.”

General Moeen’s brother, Iqbal Ahmed, became the Managing Director of the bank starting in 2003. So, he had a seat on the board of directors since then. So, General Moeen would have had to have taken the loan before the date in 2003 when Iqbal Ahmed became the Managing Director.

We know, from looking at the Trust Bank financial statements from 2003, 2004 and 2005, that the loan to General Moeen shows up in the statement starting in 2005 as a loan to a director. It does not tell us when he actually took the loan though. If it was before the date in 2003 when Iqbal Ahmed became MD then it seems this part of the regulation would not apply.

So the crucial date is in 2003 and not in 2005. However, General Moeen told the ATN TV the following:

He said the army officers get residential plots for construction of houses after being elevated to particular positions. “I have also got a plot in that way. My colleagues have built houses in their plots much earlier. But, I could not build any house for various reasons. When I was made the Army Chief I thought it would not be wise to make any further delay. I started the construction of my house as the Chief of General Staff. I do hold a detailed account of expenses for construction of the house. I have prepared the account of expenses for myself,” he said.

Since General Moeen became army chief in 2005, that puts the date of the loan after June 15, 2005. Moeen became Chairman of Trust Bank on July 3, 2005. There is a gap of about two and half weeks between the two dates. It seems quite likely that if he made the decision to get the loan after becoming army chief, he probably did not close on the loan in two and a half weeks. So it looks like he took the loan after he became Chairman. Nonetheless, it puts the loan date in 2005, well after Iqbal became Managing Director. So it seems to me, the regulations apply even if General Moeen took the loan in the two and a half week window. And they certainly apply if he took the loan after July 3, 2005 - as is most likely the case based on his own comments.

Either way, General Moeen probably needs to offer a better explanation to clear up the matter.

Good points, Mash.

Do note though that if Gen. Moeen was not a director before 2005, Trust Bank was under no legal obligation to report the loan before then. However, your point about the limitation on lending to RELATIVES still stands though. And your point about his house etc. suggests that the loan was indeed taken in 2005.

Exactly right Saif, the financial statements unfortunately dont tell us when he might have taken the loan. The only indication we have is what he has said in the interviews.

I am hoping General Moeen will clear this up fairly soon though.

Saif, good analysis. These are exactly the kind of stuff that ought to be reported/debated in the mainstream media. And that’s not happening at all. Just imagine if there was something this blatantly obvious involving someone in the Zia family before October 2006. Do you think it would be left to bloggers - very few of them professional journalists, most with busy ‘real’ life - to explore these questions if a senior figure of the previous governments were involved?

As I said in my post, I’m not calling Moeen corrupt. For all I know, everything is perfectly above board. But that ought to be explained. And the fact that the media are not reporting on this speaks volumes about the state of liberty in Bangladesh.

Gen moin says ‘When I was made the Army Chief I thought it would not be wise to make any further delay’. This means he did not start construction of the house before becoming Army chief and it appears that he must have taken the loan after he became chief.

He, however, contradicts himself in the next sentence by saying that he started the construction of the house as Chief of General Staff.

The question is, did he take the loan before he started work or after he started work.Or before becoming Army chief or after becoming Army chief.

If he took the loan before the start of the construction,when he was not a director, then may be he could take an amount as per Banks house building loan rules ( May be around taka 25 lakh) .

If he took the loan after he became Army Chief, then it was another matter, as has been discussed.

Now, how could he start construction before taking the loan. He must have been a awfully rich man. An army offficer a rich man! Doesn’t quite match.
Sorry, I forgot General Ershad and General Mahmudul Hasan.

It only be prudent for him to surrender before the law enforcing agencies to stop further humiliation of the uniform.

I hope General Matin, General Masud , and General Hasan Mashud Chowdhury are taking this case in ‘Gurutoro oporadh Daman Committee’.

I agree, Jyoti bhai. I am not calling Gen. Moeen corrupt (or rather, as the language these days would have it, “a corrupt”). For all we know, there’s a perfectly valid explanation for what happened. The point of raising this issue is to stress the need for transparency and accountabilityamong our leadership.

Saif,
If there is any valid explanation what happened, then it should come from Mr MUA. Unfortunately, he did not help himself by denying taking the 99 lakhs, given all the opportunities he got to clarify. Even if you don’t want to call him corrupt yet, it is proven that he is definitely a liar!

People will keep following how the Trust-Gate scandel unfold more or get squared.

It’s stunning, getting undue loan of about one crore taka is not a big corruption but keeping undeclared few hundred dollars, pounds or rials
by a full-minister and prominent barrister lawyer like Mr. Huda is a big corruption warranting the need fo house-search by joint-forces and arresting him without warrant.

Kee Bichitro Eidesh, Selukus !

The official position or credential of the person, barrister, minister etc. is irrelevant when it comes to the legal process. Papers have been reporting many serious corruption allegations against Nazmul Huda (e.g. the CNG conversion racket). I think Moudud Ahmed has been accused of tax violations. This regime is to be genuinely praised on the anti corruption drive provided due process is followed and guilt is actually proven in court.

Saif/Mash/Tacit
I posted the following comments at Drishtipat. For some reason they are not posting it. Do you guys know why are they so reluctant to do so?

After MUA’s “Bankgate” revelation and this new phenomenon (
http://www.daily-dinkal.com/details.php?nid=10685&pubdate=2007-10-26
), it shows how power corrupts. This is my objection about a long term unelected gov’t like present one. All their objectives sound good, but none of them have proven their own honesty at power. Power corrupts people and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It is true for everyone. Unfortunately present gov’t has more power than any of the two Netri’s had. Can anyone find any corruption charge against any of the leaders when they were not in position of power? We all are “Shujoger Ovabe Choritroban”. When you get power, your test of character starts there.

We can all remember how Ershad started, he also started with eradication of corruption and ’sontrash’. He also put politicians in jail for corruption. We all know the rest. Corruption is the most popular justification for military all over the world to take power from civilian leadership. But please don’t misunderstand me that I am trying to defend any corruption by politicians. What I am trying to say is: what made our civilian leadership corrupt (absolute power), is more obvious in present gov’t. None of them are tested leaders or proven anything that shows they are immune to the vice of power.

Now we are in a situation where we feel intimidated to ask any question! The silence or one-sided report of all news outlet about the controversy of Mr MUA proves it so vividly.

I prefer the one where I can vote them out if I don’t like them, than the one I am afraid to discuss their activities even in private.

Nice Analysis Saif. I am disappointed that the mainstream media is not giving it appropriate coverage.

A good analysis and should be replicated for other high profile corruption cases.

Not questioning Saif’s good intention, I wonder, while we are so careful not to blame Gen MUA and to discuss and present possible defences of Gen MUA, we are not doing the same for other alleged corruptions? What about a similar analysis for 3 crore taka donation taken by Sheikh Hasina for Bangabandhu memorial trust from Summit group or Khaleda Zia’s GATCO case or Tareq Zia’s failure to reveal a 300 crore taka wealth which is Daily Dinkal.

Good and fair points, Rumi bhai, as always. I think the key difference with the MUA case is that Mash bhai and the Shadakalo J’s have done the appropriate journalistic groundwork - which makes it easy to get one’s hands dirty with some analysis.

I also think you do the right thing by not reading too much into my choice of topics to blog on. Ki ar boli - ami khub hujugey chhele. I try to stay pretty consistent on writing about due process violations I notice in the current state of things, but apart from that, my choice of topics to blog on is driven more by three variables - the availability of time in a particular day, whether someone has said something that really grabs my attention, and what side of the bed I got up on - than on anything else….
- Saif

Great to know of your variables. :). Let me try to think what are mine. What side of the bed I go Up? Definitely not! But what time the baby goes to bed, thats a huge variable!

Leela: This regime is to be genuinely praised on the anti corruption drive provided due process is followed and guilt is actually proven in court.

Six months ago, when powerful politicians were first being arrested, this was the hope. Since then, the cases that have come up and the way sentences have been metted down leave a lot to be desired. I heard the editor of a major Bangla daily a few weeks ago quoting General Moeen about due process in this way: if we don’t do it this way then nothing will get done, and the nation can’t afford it.

This is one interpretation. There are other, less charitable, ones.

Perhaps the lack of credible and robust prosecution is because corruption by the previous ministers were not as bad as we’ve been told? Nazmul Huda hasn’t been charged with anything to do with CNG procurement issue afaik.

Or perhaps the politicians are being charged with trivial cases and are being given outlandish sentences because this will allow the higher courts to quash these cases when the time comes for a political deal? It’s lot easier to throw out a beer posession case against Moudud when he is needed to draft the indemnity clause to the constitution.

I know many of you (bloggers) personally know the people accused here http://www.daily-dinkal.com/details.php?nid=10685&pubdate=2007-10-26 . If possible, could you post their side of the story. I was wondering why all other news outlet in Bangladesh ignored it!

Oof, I wrote a really really long comment and lost it to internet oblivion. sigh. Jyoti, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I agree with you, we need to complicate the picture. When I have a bit more time I’ll write post about the unresolved and questionable parts of the ACC/NBR cases. Or maybe our in house lawyer would like to take over?
Ok, one bit of the comment I can’t resist resurrecting, because I’ve been thinking of this for quite a while:

Moudud=Talleyrand

Sorry I’ve used up all my words for the day in that lost comment.

Rumi bhai, a variable for me is what time my boss’s kid wakes up at night. See, if the kid gets up at 3am, my boss also gets up then, and then he gets work ideas which translate into sentences like ‘Jyoti, I was thinking about the impact on X on Y and Z, do you mind having a look?’, and looking at XYZ means less time for blogging!

iqo, good question. I don’t know any of these people personally but I have heard the same and additional allegations from other sources. Why are the major dailies quiet on this? The adviser in question should already feel compelled to clear her name since the allegations are very serious. A bigger point is in order: the government’s anti corruption drive is well and good (insert caveats), but what about all the politician led/supported murders, attacks and property destruction that have taken place over the last 15 years? That list is quite long.

Do people expect some kind of truth to simple self organise in a shower of participatory techno glory over this? The bank details, the ‘evidence’ didnt just self organise themselves up into blogerganj.

Trial by blog relies on parties to a controversy, not vested observers with axes to grind, having a fair shot and that the fair minded blogfolks’ collective intelligences’ are neutrally exercised, and restrained by some kind of sense of accepted limits.

The absence of justice led to the print media being used to give some notion of the beast. Now this.

On a man who is responsible for the military defence of 140 million. Who would lead us into battle. On the basis of nonlinear loan repayments recorded before 1/11 when sod all rules applied. In a town with elites inbred enough to all practically be related and party to eachothers whispers.

I could list 1001 excuses.
All of them could be wrong.
Then the fearsome looking chap would replace the man. Else its back to the same ol’ same ol’.

alternatively:
With the elusive and innocuous explanation received, justice is not served, the damage has already been done, perceptions will have been changed, positions will have been taken and some people will feel more important.

The lyric ‘Freedom of speech wont feed my children, Just brings heart disease and bootleg clothing’ never seemed so apt

In the UK (sorry) someone up there and a few people across the hall would invoke the public interest. (cf recent saudi jet deal)
The people would get it, but the national interest would have been served.

Fugstar, bhai - that’s trippy stuff. I’m not quite sure I follow what you are saying, really. May be I’m just being stupid… Explain, may be, for the benefit of this confused soul, please? Could you please:
1. Decipher Para 1.
2. Decipher Para 2. Particularly who are these “vested observers”?
3. Decipher Para 3. What’s ‘this” in “Now this.” What’s this “beast” you speak of. (Very Book of Revelation, I must say… I like the sound of it)
4. Decipher Para 4.
5. Decipher Para 5.
6. Decipher Para 6.
7. Decipher Para 7. Particularly, ‘apt’ to what - the post, the comments, something else?
8. Decipher Para 8. (WHich probably would make sense to me if I got paras 1-7)

Do excuse my abject opaqueness. It’s 2:30 in the morning, and I still have about 70 pages to read tonight…

What Fugstar is essentially saying is that if you see something odd happening, don’t speak out because it might {be rude, might not lead to anything, produce argument and disharmony, hurt the positions of powerful men, be damaging to public interest defined by the people being questioned, be any combination of these}.

Now, applying this logic, we shouldn’t really say anything about the British government’s anti-terror laws because doing so might {be rude, might not lead to anything, produce argument and disharmony, hurt the positions of powerful men, be damaging to public interest defined by the people being questioned, be any combination of these}.

And at a more humble level, we shouldn’t really talk to each other lest we say something that {hurts others’ feelings, might not lead to anything, produce disharmony, okay that’s it because I don’t know about you guys, but damaging my position as a blogger doesn’t really amount much in terms of public interest}.

Saif ul adda,
erm. maybe next time! Cheers for the biblical vibe award.

para 1 - wondering about the assumptions behind ‘blogging truth to power’.
vested observers - some of the people using the case
beast - justice (powerful quality)
now this - the demolishing onf Gen Moeenuddins reputation through this.

hope that helps, and that your reading was fun.

Janab jyoti,
its less your esteem in the world of electrons, more the General’s in the world of nations. This clicked with me big time when someone was celebrating the stories publication in the indian press.

logic is not the only way of knowing and it depends from where you start from. Lets start from social norms and akhlaq. Imam Hanbal went through real trouble for not relating to power so the passive, fatalist

mirroring the uk situation wrt to muslims seems a little odd, why do that by the way? the game is much more stable here and the social norms mirror the government more, open society is a semicredible concept here and libeling procedures restrain some of the excesses (if you are rich enough).

libel doesnt realy exists in BD, defo not in blogerganj, where words hang in the air for quite a long time.

Fug Sahib, I’m afraid logic is the way of knowing I’m familiar with. I don’t deny that there are other ways, it’s just that they’re not the path I’ve chosen. So it’s no surprise at all that we would be talking at cross purposes. If you took the path of logic, we could have a debate. Alas, our paths are different.

As far as i can tell from my road of irrationality and emotionally scarred fiction…..

On this issue your type of logic is socially constructed, and particularly deterministic and linear. In keeping with this tradition i will describe the tradition of logic that many follow, that i hope you dont like either.

10 Wind up and muck rake.
20 Wind up some more with alien maxims to appeal to the neighbours.
30 Invite recrimination.
40 Suffer losses and make matters worse for everyone.
50 Complain about suffering recrimination.
60 Feel brave and patriotic for some reason.
70 Channel ensuing righteous indignation into wind up planning.
80 Use liberal commonsense to justify that if one doesnt repeat the loop all will be lost, and that the entity you are winding up’s dignity is halal for you.
90 Goto line 10 but increment the level of triviality up one level.

Since I’ve been the only one (to my limited knowledge) to post on the fact that the Statesman has picked up the Bankgate story let me answer that shameless accusation made behind my back on another blog that I was somehow “celebrating the stories publication in the indian press.” If this wasn’t against me, I apologise in advance.

There is a subtle difference between INFORMING and NOTING and CELEBRATING that probably escapes my Islamist friend who probably celebrates everything he writes about. Should we include his post on the sexual harrassment/assault on a minor by a USAID officer he posted about last month to that list of celebrations?

Go back to my post (if that’s what you were talking about) and see how much celebration you find there. NONE is the correct answer.

Do you think I personally like the fact that Indians are writing stories about OUR General, the Chief of OUR Army? No, I do not.

Nor am I happy or “celebrating” the fact that our journalists are so cowed (or alternately, so infused with “akhlaq” that they have forgotten their responsibility to report on powerful people.

Fugstar might exercise all his theoretical “Islamic” sophism as much as he wants. The truth of the matter it IS the Islamic thing to do to hold powerful people accountable, especially of their finances. That is how the Muslims became powerful, and it’s people like Fugstar who made them corrupt. My humble two cents on the rise and fall of Muslim Empires.

Oh and next time, you might want to leave comments on my blog (or whoever’s) if you have problems with what they post.

tbh darling i wasnt actually thinking of you.

Who were you thinking of “sweetheart”? Who else has posted on this, would like to know. Just want links to check on whether you’ve gone there and expressed your criticisms to their face.

Also want to check how much “celebrating” was done. Don’t really trust your judgement too much.

Fugstar, I share your dislike of the ‘tradition of logic’ you describe. However, I don’t think any of the blogs I regularly visit (Adda, Dhaka, Rumi bhai’s, Mash’s, Tacit’s, UV, Shadakalo) are guilty of what you describe. If you have any problem with other blogs then you should argue with them.

Fugstar, I suppose you might be busy, but I hope you haven’t forgotten my request to furnish some links to blogs where people were “celebrating” the publication of this sad news in a foreign newspaper. I’d like to do a blog post on them, and I’m still waiting.

fugstar… “honey”…. it’s been a few days since I asked you for links to these blog posts you saw where Bangladeshis were celebrating the news of the Statesman publishing the story. Given that your last response was within an hour of my post, I’m starting to get worried.

Please come up with a few links soon or admit you were wrong. Silence beyond Friday will be taken as a sign of the latter.

I really hope you furnish me with the links I asked for. I like nothing better than criticising Bangladeshis whose sense of nationhood is always caught up in pan-national schemes…. oops, have I said too much?

I dont know if this should be posted here as its got quite personalised. That isnt my intention, to stab you in the back, delightfully dramatic though it sounds.

There is one comment on your post, though i dont know what day it was made on. If i had a different sensibility i would start an epetition about it or something. The click was that I could vividly visualise the ideologically anti-CTG (the CNGs) yelling a score line over this. The sense of proportion is what really gets me. very line 60 through to 90.

The party tone does not come from you, that is elswhere. Therefore you are not the center of interpretation. apologies for making you feel that way.

Jyoti,
The particular tradition of hardwired logic is what i see firmly imprinted in parts of ‘real life’/activist practice, not specifically in blogs or over the general. The emphasis on wind up and escalation and then righteous indignation at losses incurred troubles me . It’s like having a cake, eating a cake and not being interested in paying for the costs of the cake after said consumtion.

AsifY, Fugstar - bhais - I don’t know if this thread has gotten too personalized. I fear it has. Let’s get back to some issues

Understood saif-ul-adda. My reason was less to bait on fugstar and more to find if he really has any evidence to back up the “celebration” claim. And fugstar, I’m actually quite thick of skin in real life, so lose less sleep over my feelings. Your concerns are appreciated.

You might remember that my post on the Bankgate story says precisely this: that the regime and its supporters will use this to taint their critics with being “indian agents”. Fugstar in his own inimitable way started it already by saying that someone or the other was “celebrating” it. The people “celebrating” this sad piece of news are not friends of Bangladesh, that much I will admit. However, I’m yet to find much evidence of celebration. I will look into my comments section soon.

What I find surprising is the complete silence from fugstar and CTG-supporters in general as to why it took the freaking Statesman to be the first one to publish this story! Why not one of our own newspapers? What were they afraid of? I think we all know the answer to that. Sadly fugstar deals with how the publication reflects on the bloggers who broke the news, rather than on the media that refused to and the government that choked it. And it is this distorted focus on the faults of the powerless that I cannot understand at times.

Sorry for making adda the battleground. Hereonin, fugstar and my conversation is at an end from my side.