Disappointing finding by WB spells trouble for the Govt.

 

By the time Finance Minister AMA Muhith takes stock of what is inside the World Bank report on the Padma bridge scam, the US Secretary of State John Kerry will have landed in Dhaka on June 25; unless Kerry changes his mind at the last moment due to his reported preoccupations in Delhi.

The Bank’s final report on the Padma bridge corruption investigation was handed over personally to the Finance Minister by the Bank’s country Director, Johannes Zutt, on June 11. Muhith told journalists after receiving the report: “I cannot say anything about the contents as I have yet to open it.”

Silence neither denotes defence, nor is it indicative of a rebuttal to any allegation. The report follows the Bank’s negation to fund the project—which cannot be presumed as an act without sufficient reason– and a recent budgetary allocation by the government of about Taka 50 billion to construct the proposed bridge with the country’s own resources.

The budgetary allocation seemed to have sprung from phantom revenue sources at a time when the economy is in visible contraction, and the pre-election political horizon is thickening further with more gathering storms.

Yet, if the budgetary allocation for the bridge aimed at emitting a signal to the Bank, the bank has replied in kind, within days, in this final report by laying down, as we’ve learnt, in minute details why it had to scrap its promised $1.2 billion funding; prompting the ADB and the other co-financiers too to withdraw from their funding from the $2.9 billion project.

Given the sensibility and the backlashes it is likely to arouse, the content of the report may or may not become public ever. But the actions taken by the Bank since the investigation came to a close about two months ago do indicate that there are ‘devastating findings’ unearthed by an expert panel.

The Bank and the government of Bangladesh have been at odds since October 10, 2011, when the former suspended its $1.2 billion promised funding for the bridge amid allegations of irregularities, which the government rejected as baseless.

After a year-long haggling over the allegations and the necessity to probe them, the Bank cobbled together an expert panel on October 5, 2012 to conduct an exhaustive investigation into the alleged irregularities.

Chaired by Luis Moreno Ocampo, former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, there is no reason to conclude that the findings of the panel are trivial or inconsequential. The other two panel members involved in the probing were Timothy Tong, former commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, People’s Republic of China; and, Richard Alderman, former director of Britain’s Serious Fraud Office.

This expert panel conducted two major probing, as we’ve learnt. The first one relates irregularities spotted in the bridge construction contract while the second one involves irregularities in the consultancy contract.

These allegations having been handed down to the Bangladesh government by the Bank on September 21, 2011, the government could and should have shown its due diligence by conducting a fair investigation of its own, as did Canada over the alleged corruption of officials belonging to one of its corporate entities.

It was learnt that the report’s findings include facts relating to the allegations from the Bank’s Integrity Vice-Presidency that SAHCO, a firm connected to then communications minister Syed Abul Hossain, had sought to coerce companies to use it as an intermediary to secure the main bridge contract.

The report also authenticated the veracity of allegations from eleven confidential witnesses against SAHCO, which Abul Hossain rebutted as being concoctions by companies angered by their rejection by the technical evaluation committee for the contract bid.

The report further examined whether there was conflict of interest in the participation of SAHCO in the tender bidding, despite Hossain’s contention being that, he had resigned from the post of the company’s managing director.

One finds in retrospect, as Abul Hossain was declared innocent in February 2012 by a hastily conducted internal probing over the allegations by the Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), the Bank decided to conduct its own probing.

By March this year, the Bank’s investigation came to its end, it was learnt, and the expected outcome of it could not be concealed due to the actions already taken. The actions themselves should speak a lot about what is inside the report.

Of the two parties investigated, the state party (Bangladesh government officials) was a sensitive one, and, a report had to be submitted tactfully with carefully chosen time and context. That time is now; ahead of an election and just after the government’s move to go alone with the construction of the bridge.

The second party being a private entity, Canadian engineering giant SNC-Lavalin, the Bank in April 2013 banned it from conducting business with the Bank for 10 years due to what the Bank said “its role in a corruption scandal over the Padma Bridge project in Bangladesh.’’

Unless substantive evidence was unearthed against the SNC- Lavalin of having indulged in corrupt practices, the Canadian government would have opposed such a punitive action against one of its global-brand corporate entities by the Bank.

To the contrary, no sooner the Bank alleged that SNC-Lavalin conspired to receive bribes over the financing of the $2.9 billion bridge project in Bangladesh, the Canadian authorities moved in full force to investigate and prosecute the alleged criminals.

For its part, Bangladesh even did not care to take into cognizance an emphatic statement by the Bank in June 2012 that it had found “credible evidence” of high-level corruption among Bangladesh officials involved with the project, and that, it had alerted Canadian officials of the same; following which Canadian authorities began to arrest, charge and prosecute a number of SNC-Lavalin officials.

To say the least, the attitudes of the Bangladesh government have been reprehensible and condescending from the beginning, despite robust actions undertaken by the Canadian authorities based on the same allegations given by the Bank about the alleged misconducts of one of its corporate entities.

That, however, is unlikely to nudge the government out of the hook. The Bank’s final report is learnt to have included information of probative value received from the investigation conducted by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) which, in September 2011, raided the SNC-Lavalin’s offices, and, in April 2012, arrested and charged two SNC-Lavalin executives under Canada’s Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act for allegedly attempting to bribe Bangladeshi officials in their bid for the consultancy contract of the bridge.

Moreover, the ongoing court case in Canada involves six Bangladeshi officials as being complicit in the alleged crime, including Bangladesh’s former communications minister and a number of other rogue officials and middlemen linked to the people at the helm of Bangladesh’s power pyramid. That may be why the wall of silence of the government is hard to break.

Source: Weekly Holiday