Home ›› 23 Nov 2022 ›› Front
The chief of the Criminal Investigation Department Mohammad Ali Mia, also an Additional IGP, on Tuesday asked the Mobile Financial Service operators to strictly monitor their distributors, otherwise, they will face the music.
He made the call after arresting six people who run illegal hundi businesses in the guise of MFS agents in Dhaka and Cumilla.
“If they fail to monitor their distributors, we will take strict action against them. Besides, the distributors should also monitor the activities of their agents,” Mohammad Ali told reporters at his office.
The arrestees are – Mir Md Kamrul Hasan Shishir, 28, who runs Freedom Net website, Distribution House Manager Khorshed Alam, 34, MFS agent Md Ibrahim Khalil, 34, MFS DSO Kazi Shah Newaz, 46, MFS agent Md Azizul Haque Talukder, 42, and MFS agent Assistant Md Nizam Uddin, 35.
Mohammad Ali said the CID bean monitoring the hundi activities to address the possible risks to the economy of Bangladesh.
The CID intelligence already identified more than 5,000 MFS agent accounts which are used for laundering money.
The Financial Crime and Cyber Crime Unit of the CID conducted three raids in Chattogram and arrested 16 persons recently. In continuation of the drive, six more people have been arrested, he said.
Mohammad Ali said that they found that Khorshed Alam owned MFS Distribution House JA Enterprises located in Cumilla’s Laksam transacts between Tk 200 crore and Tk 300 crore every month through 2000 agent accounts.
He said the CID first traced suspicious transactions of huge amounts of money while working on two MFS agents who transacted more than Tk 3 crore in the past six months. While following up, they also traced 11 more MFS agents who are involved with the hundi business in digital form.
During primary interrogation, one of the arrested persons told the CID that more than 2000 MFS agents are directly involved in digital hundi and they carry out such illegal activities through several mobile apps such as Freemdomflexi24.com.
Mohammad Ali also called on the expatriates to send remittances through proper and legal banking channels.
“In that case, the country will develop, and they [expatriates] will not be under the surveillance of law enforcement agencies,” the CID chief added.
