Home ›› 19 Jul 2021 ›› Front
Hasan Al Javed
Ten years ago, the story of Nurul Alam in the farthest south town of Bangladesh was similar to many youths in Latin America — a football-mad from poor income group dreaming to be a star footballer when the family finds it tough to manage three meals a day.
He spent every second of the little time that he could manage for leisure in football after supporting his parents. Odd jobs like selling home-reared poultry and goat in the local market of Nazir Para and pulling rickshaw and catching Hilsa on river Naf or the adjacent Bay of Bengal during monsoon were his means to support the family.
A supporter of Argentina and a big fan of its winger Angel Fabian Di Maria, Nurul used to copy Di Maria’s style which changed his identity. No one in the small town of Teknaf in Cox’s Bazar now knows him by his real name. He is now Di Maria there.
Nurul no longer plays football. His lifestyle also got changed. Now he owns an eye-catching two-storey villa on the beach town, drives shining luxurious car, has bundles of moneymaking ventures and handsome deposit in banks along with a huge amount of undisclosed money.
Out to reverse the curse of poverty, Nurul was looking for something magical, something like a touchstone. And he finally got it. It was Amphetamine, better known as Yaba in South and South East Asia and as meth elsewhere, Nurul’s touchstone.
He smuggled in Yaba in bulk quantity from Myanmar and supplied those to retail drug rackets.
A 10mg size pill of Yaba is retailed at more or less Tk 300 in Dhaka and the Narcotics Control Act-2018 mandates death sentence or life-term imprisonment for carrying, producing, trading and consuming more than 200 grams of Yaba.
The Bangladesh Bank’s Financial Intelligence Unit traced Tk 11.6 crore in bank accounts of once rickshaw-puller Nurul. The unit found Tk 3,74,35,093 in his account with Sonali Bank’s Teknaf branch, Tk 1,71,98,956 in AB Bank’s Teknaf branch, and Tk 6,18,68,620 in Islami Bank Bangladesh Limited’s ’s Teknaf branch.
The unit said all the money Nurul earned by illicit Yaba trade.
The Criminal Investigation Department of police identifies Nurul as a “big merchant” of Yaba and Faridul Alam, Akter Kamal, Mohammad Taiyab, and Mohammad Hasan his cohorts.
Nurul’s cohorts collect money from retail drug rackets by mobile financial services and deposit part of it in bank accounts, said the CID.
One of the CID investigators told The Business Post that Nurul Alam and his family built multiple luxury apartments in the tourism city of Cox’s Bazar.
CID’s investigators said that Yaba merchants like Nurul first launder huge amount of money to Myanmar in the name of importing commodities and the pills were collected from producers there.
After smuggling the pills into Bangladesh, they supply those to different districts and collect the money through banks, mobile financial services, or cash. Of the collected money, a little amount is deposited with various banks.
The CID investigators said most of the proceedings from Yaba were laundered back to Myanmar.
The CID filed 12 cases against 21 persons including Nurul Alam in between 2011 and 2017 for smuggling Yaba pills into Bangladesh from Myanmar and supplying those to Dhaka city, Narayanganj, and Narsingdi by road and air.
Teknaf upzila unit Awami League general secretary Nurul Bashar told The Business Post that Nazir Para is the village in Teknaf where mostly poor lived 10 years ago but many families there turned rich all of a sudden through smuggling in Yaba and Nurul Alam is one of them.
“Local people know him as Di Maria. Once he used to sell chicken and goat at Teknaf Bazar and pulled rickshaw in the town. Now his wealth reached beyond one’s imagination,” he said.
Nurul Alam was on the run for long and got arrested in a case in 2018 and later secured bail. On February 16, 2019, Nurul surrendered to the police in the presence of home minister Asaduzzman Khan after the government had announced a general amnesty before launching a ‘war’ against drugs. He now lives with two sons and wife at Chawkbazar in Teknaf.
The Business Post made several attempts to have Nurul Alam’s version over phone and in person but he was not available.
CID’s financial crime unit special superintendent Humayon Kabir told The Business Post that they were investigating the visible and hidden wealth made from drug dealing in Teknaf. “We are scrutinising bank deposits in their names or in names of their relatives and information about their wealth got from different sources,” he said.
“After concluding the investigation, we will submit a report to the authorities concerned. Then the government might take required legal action against,” he said adding that all of the deposits of the suspected drug dealers in banks have been confiscated.
The investigators suspect outside their bank transactions or deposits, that the drug rings had siphoned off a huge amount of money abroad.
After the ‘war’ against Yaba was launched, many Yaba traders and merchants in Teknaf listed by the home ministry fled to different countries including Thailand, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
After the government announced a general amnesty, 132 Yaba smugglers surrendered to police in two phases on February 16, 2019, and February 3, 2020.
Teknaf police Officer-in-Charge Md Abul Faisal said that they were arresting drug dealers who face arrest warrant from courts.
He also said that they would take action if it was proved that any of those who had surrendered before police after a general amnesty once again got involved with drug dealing.
The Department of Narcotics Control seized 3,63,81,017 pills of Yaba in 2020, 3,04,46,328 pills in 2019, and 5,30,48,548 pills in 2018. The total value of this illicit business is estimated to be worth upwards of $1b a year.
