Ex-minister Imran placed on 3-day remand in embezzlement and trafficking case

A Dhaka court today placed former expatriates’ welfare and overseas employment minister Imran Ahmad on a three-day remand in connection with a case over the embezzlement of Tk 4,200 crore and human trafficking.
Dhaka Metropolitan Magistrate Mehera Mahbub passed the remand order after Investigation Officer (IO) Nazmul Hasan, a sub-inspector of Paltan Model Police Station, produced Imran before the court with a request for a 10-day remand.
In the remand plea, the IO said Imran was directly involved in the embezzlement and human trafficking scheme and needed to be interrogated to uncover critical details about the case.
The defence filed for bail and sought the cancellation of the remand, arguing that their client was not connected to the crimes.
After hearing both sides, the magistrate rejected the defence’s pleas and granted the remand for further investigation.
Earlier today, a team from the detective branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police arrested Imran Ahmad from Dhaka’s Banani.
The case was initially filed on September 3 by Altaf Khan, the owner of a recruiting agency, accusing 103 individuals, including Imran Ahmad and former senior secretary Ahmed Munirus Saleheen, of involvement in the embezzlement and human trafficking scheme.
The case also named former lawmaker from Feni-3 Nizam Uddin Hazari, Lieutenant General (retd) Masud Uddin Chowdhury, and Kashmiri Kamal and Nafisa Kamal, the wife and daughter of former finance minister AHM Mustafa Kamal, along with at least 100 recruiting agency owners.
According to the case statement, the allegations stemmed from a 2021 memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Bangladesh and Malaysia that selected only 100 recruiting agencies out of 2,500 in Bangladesh for worker recruitment.
This alleged syndicate was accused of lobbying both governments to secure the agreement, which allowed them to charge workers exorbitant fees for employment in Malaysia.
The selected agencies reportedly charged Tk 4.5 to Tk 6 lakh per Malaysia-bound worker, while the expatriate welfare and overseas employment ministry had set the official recruitment fee at Tk 79,000, according to the case statement.