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AL lawmaker purchases nine apartments in US: OCCRP
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists in a report on Friday said that Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League lawmaker Abdus Sobhan Miah procured nine apartments in the United States.
The OCCRP claimed that it published the report after making necessary fact-checks through its Fact-Checking Desk.
New Age requested Sobhan Miah’s comment about the OCCRP findings, but he neither responded to phone calls nor replied to text messages.
OCCRP reported that in 2014, a former cab driver Abdus Sobhan Miah began buying apartments in an upscale building in New York City’s Jackson Heights district. Over the next five years, his portfolio came to include nine properties, worth over $4 million in total.
‘Miah was an unlikely real estate baron. After moving to the U.S. from Bangladesh in the 1980s, associates say he worked a series of low-paying jobs — making pizzas, serving as a drugstore clerk, and driving an unlicensed taxi,’ it reported.
But back in Bangladesh, where he is widely known by the nickname ‘Golap,’ Miah was a far more prominent figure. As a long-serving member of the ruling Awami League party, he has served as a personal aide to prime minister Sheikh Hasina and today is a member of parliament.
Hasina, Bangladesh’s longest-ruling leader, has been a fixture of the country’s political life since the early 1980s. After serving as prime minister from 1996 to 2001, she returned to the post with overwhelming support in 2009, the report stated.
Since then, she has remained in power through two highly controversial elections, while her government has been accused of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, muzzling the independent press, and allowing corruption to run rampant, it said.
‘Miah’s New York purchases started about five years after he returned to Bangladesh to work as Hasina’s assistant in 2009. His declarations and tax records show no evidence of any US income at that point, and it’s unclear how he could have accumulated millions of dollars to buy the properties from his local jobs,’ it said.
It’s also unclear how Sobhan could have bought them with his official salary as Hasina’s aide, which amounted to the equivalent of $1,000 a month, the report said, adding that even if he did have millions of dollars stashed away in Bangladesh, he never applied for approval to transfer the money abroad from the central bank, as is legally required, and would not have been able to do so to buy property anyway.
In its report, Transparency International Bangladesh executive director Iftekharuzzaman said that there was no legal means through which a Bangladeshi citizen could purchase property outside the country by income earned within Bangladesh.
The report also claimed that OCCRP reporters made repeated attempts to reach Sobhan by phone, text message, and email, and tried to speak to him in person, but he did not respond to questions about his properties.
PM’s office also did not respond to emailed requests for comment by OCCRP, it said.
The report said that Sobhan, AL publicity and publication secretary, had been involved with Hasina’s Awami League ever since he was in the party’s student wing while at university in Dhaka in the 1970s.
‘After a stint studying in Norway, he left for New York in the mid-1980s. For the next three decades, he moved between the U.S. and Bangladesh, with the timing mirroring the rise and fall of Hasina’s political fortunes,’ the report said.
While in New York, Sobhan mobilised support for Hasina among the city’s Bangladeshi community by organising Awami League seminars and meetings, according to two US-based party leaders, who asked for anonymity out of fear of reprisals. They also said he chauffeured Hasina during her US visits and assisted her son, Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed, with odd jobs when he was also living in the US.
‘After Hasina was first elected prime minister in 1996, Miah moved back to Dhaka to work as her unofficial personal assistant, the party leaders said. Five years later, Hasina lost power and Miah returned to New York, where he and his current wife worked as clerks in a Walgreens drug store, according to the two party leaders and another person who knew him at the time. At some point during his time in the U.S. he also received citizenship there,’ the report said.
It said that in 2007, Hasina left Bangladesh under pressure from the military-backed regime in power at the time. When she tried to fly back to Dhaka later that year, Sobhan was in her entourage at London’s Heathrow Airport. Just before the Awami League swept back into power the following year, he moved back to Bangladesh and has lived there ever since.
Sobhan’s loyalty was rewarded in 2009 with an appointment as Hasina’s ‘special assistant,’ a top government position that gave him extensive political influence and power, but pays just $1,000 per month.
He remained in that role until 2018, when he was elected as an MP for the Madaripur-3 constituency while still a US citizen — a fact that Iftekharuzzaman said should have barred him from running for office.
Sobhan only renounced his US citizenship on August 15, 2019, according to official records, seven months after he was elected as a member of parliament in Bangladesh. Property records show that by then he had also acquired substantial assets in New York.
Between 2014 and 2018, he bought five condominiums, worth roughly $2.4 million at the time, in a Jackson Heights building featuring a concierge service, an outdoor pool, and covered parking.
He also bought three more apartments, worth $680,000, in nearby co-op buildings.
New York property records show that all were purchased with cash. Sobhan’s wife, Gulshan Ara Miah, is also listed as an owner.
In December 2019 — after Sobhan was elected as an MP, a role that pays a monthly salary of around $647 — he added another property in Jackson Heights: this time, a semi-detached house worth almost $1.2 million.
In a suo motu ruling on November 22, 2020, the High Court directed the government and the ACC to submit to it by December 17, 2020 details about the perpetrators, including government officials, politicians, businessmen, and others, who siphoned off money abroad, including Malaysia, Singapore, the USA, Canada, and Australia.
The court issued the suo motu ruling after taking cognisance of foreign minister AK Abdul Momen’s November 18, 2020, public statement on the issue, which many newspapers published the following day.
The minister said that he had received information from an unofficial channel that many Bangladeshis had bought luxurious residences in a neighbourhood in Canada called Begum Para in Canada for millions of dollars laundered from Bangladesh.
Mainly because the wives and children of a section of Bangladeshi millionaires live in the neighbourhood’s residences, it has been named Begum Para.
In October 2022, Bangladesh’s High Court asked the Anti-Corruption Commission to take action against corrupt people who have laundered money in foreign countries, including to Begum Para in Canada, instead of harassing businessmen in petty cases.
The HC reminded the commission to take action against the money launderers as neither the government nor the commission has yet to submit detailed reports on those involved in siphoning money abroad, including to Canada, the USA, and Australia.
www.newagebd.net
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists in a report on Friday said that Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League lawmaker Abdus Sobhan Miah procured nine apartments in the United States.
The OCCRP claimed that it published the report after making necessary fact-checks through its Fact-Checking Desk.
New Age requested Sobhan Miah’s comment about the OCCRP findings, but he neither responded to phone calls nor replied to text messages.
OCCRP reported that in 2014, a former cab driver Abdus Sobhan Miah began buying apartments in an upscale building in New York City’s Jackson Heights district. Over the next five years, his portfolio came to include nine properties, worth over $4 million in total.
‘Miah was an unlikely real estate baron. After moving to the U.S. from Bangladesh in the 1980s, associates say he worked a series of low-paying jobs — making pizzas, serving as a drugstore clerk, and driving an unlicensed taxi,’ it reported.
But back in Bangladesh, where he is widely known by the nickname ‘Golap,’ Miah was a far more prominent figure. As a long-serving member of the ruling Awami League party, he has served as a personal aide to prime minister Sheikh Hasina and today is a member of parliament.
Hasina, Bangladesh’s longest-ruling leader, has been a fixture of the country’s political life since the early 1980s. After serving as prime minister from 1996 to 2001, she returned to the post with overwhelming support in 2009, the report stated.
Since then, she has remained in power through two highly controversial elections, while her government has been accused of enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings, muzzling the independent press, and allowing corruption to run rampant, it said.
‘Miah’s New York purchases started about five years after he returned to Bangladesh to work as Hasina’s assistant in 2009. His declarations and tax records show no evidence of any US income at that point, and it’s unclear how he could have accumulated millions of dollars to buy the properties from his local jobs,’ it said.
It’s also unclear how Sobhan could have bought them with his official salary as Hasina’s aide, which amounted to the equivalent of $1,000 a month, the report said, adding that even if he did have millions of dollars stashed away in Bangladesh, he never applied for approval to transfer the money abroad from the central bank, as is legally required, and would not have been able to do so to buy property anyway.
In its report, Transparency International Bangladesh executive director Iftekharuzzaman said that there was no legal means through which a Bangladeshi citizen could purchase property outside the country by income earned within Bangladesh.
The report also claimed that OCCRP reporters made repeated attempts to reach Sobhan by phone, text message, and email, and tried to speak to him in person, but he did not respond to questions about his properties.
PM’s office also did not respond to emailed requests for comment by OCCRP, it said.
The report said that Sobhan, AL publicity and publication secretary, had been involved with Hasina’s Awami League ever since he was in the party’s student wing while at university in Dhaka in the 1970s.
‘After a stint studying in Norway, he left for New York in the mid-1980s. For the next three decades, he moved between the U.S. and Bangladesh, with the timing mirroring the rise and fall of Hasina’s political fortunes,’ the report said.
While in New York, Sobhan mobilised support for Hasina among the city’s Bangladeshi community by organising Awami League seminars and meetings, according to two US-based party leaders, who asked for anonymity out of fear of reprisals. They also said he chauffeured Hasina during her US visits and assisted her son, Sajeeb Ahmed Wazed, with odd jobs when he was also living in the US.
‘After Hasina was first elected prime minister in 1996, Miah moved back to Dhaka to work as her unofficial personal assistant, the party leaders said. Five years later, Hasina lost power and Miah returned to New York, where he and his current wife worked as clerks in a Walgreens drug store, according to the two party leaders and another person who knew him at the time. At some point during his time in the U.S. he also received citizenship there,’ the report said.
It said that in 2007, Hasina left Bangladesh under pressure from the military-backed regime in power at the time. When she tried to fly back to Dhaka later that year, Sobhan was in her entourage at London’s Heathrow Airport. Just before the Awami League swept back into power the following year, he moved back to Bangladesh and has lived there ever since.
Sobhan’s loyalty was rewarded in 2009 with an appointment as Hasina’s ‘special assistant,’ a top government position that gave him extensive political influence and power, but pays just $1,000 per month.
He remained in that role until 2018, when he was elected as an MP for the Madaripur-3 constituency while still a US citizen — a fact that Iftekharuzzaman said should have barred him from running for office.
Sobhan only renounced his US citizenship on August 15, 2019, according to official records, seven months after he was elected as a member of parliament in Bangladesh. Property records show that by then he had also acquired substantial assets in New York.
Between 2014 and 2018, he bought five condominiums, worth roughly $2.4 million at the time, in a Jackson Heights building featuring a concierge service, an outdoor pool, and covered parking.
He also bought three more apartments, worth $680,000, in nearby co-op buildings.
New York property records show that all were purchased with cash. Sobhan’s wife, Gulshan Ara Miah, is also listed as an owner.
In December 2019 — after Sobhan was elected as an MP, a role that pays a monthly salary of around $647 — he added another property in Jackson Heights: this time, a semi-detached house worth almost $1.2 million.
In a suo motu ruling on November 22, 2020, the High Court directed the government and the ACC to submit to it by December 17, 2020 details about the perpetrators, including government officials, politicians, businessmen, and others, who siphoned off money abroad, including Malaysia, Singapore, the USA, Canada, and Australia.
The court issued the suo motu ruling after taking cognisance of foreign minister AK Abdul Momen’s November 18, 2020, public statement on the issue, which many newspapers published the following day.
The minister said that he had received information from an unofficial channel that many Bangladeshis had bought luxurious residences in a neighbourhood in Canada called Begum Para in Canada for millions of dollars laundered from Bangladesh.
Mainly because the wives and children of a section of Bangladeshi millionaires live in the neighbourhood’s residences, it has been named Begum Para.
In October 2022, Bangladesh’s High Court asked the Anti-Corruption Commission to take action against corrupt people who have laundered money in foreign countries, including to Begum Para in Canada, instead of harassing businessmen in petty cases.
The HC reminded the commission to take action against the money launderers as neither the government nor the commission has yet to submit detailed reports on those involved in siphoning money abroad, including to Canada, the USA, and Australia.
AL lawmaker purchases nine apartments in US: OCCRP
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global network of investigative journalists in a report on Friday said that Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League lawmaker...
www.newagebd.net
