Govt to amend ACC laws to expedite fraud probe

The government plans an amendment to existing laws to expedite fraud investigations now often stuck in the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) over jurisdictions, reports bdnews24.com.  
That has ended up denying justice to tens of thousands in Bangladesh.
Police were responsible for investigating complaints over fraud and forgery until late 2013, after which the jurisdiction was shifted to the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC).
Since then, fraud investigations and trials have been delayed as the police do not lodge these complaints anymore and the ACC said it is bogged down by 'insufficient manpower' to handle the flood of fraud allegations.
Seized of the problem, the law ministry has already moved to amend the laws to solve the problem.
A draft has been prepared, that might be placed at Parliament during its current session, according to Law Minister Anisul Huq.
The 2004 ACC Act stipulates that the commission will look into matters like acquiring wealth disproportionate to known sources of income, embezzlement of government resources and breach of trust.
In 2009, money laundering was included in its purview. In December, 2013, offences under five sections, including fraud and forgery of the Code of Criminal Procedure, were added.
Until then, police investigated these complaints and the trials were held in magistrate courts.
But after the 2013 change in laws, these cases now have to be tried in district judges' courts.
These courts being few and far between cannot handle the flood of complaints and that leads to the stalemate.
Munshiganj's Aminul Islam Sabuj was conned by fraudsters who took Tk 80,000 and promised him employment in Malaysia.  
The local police advised him to take the matter to the ACC, when he went to file a case.
The only option for Sabuj was to come to the ACC headquarters in Dhaka as there was no ACC office in Munshiganj.
"I was told at first that the ACC does not file cases, instead I was asked to submit my complaint in writing. I did that.
"Since then I have been to the ACC five times; the last time in May, but I am yet to get a clear idea on what is actually to be done about my complaint," Sabuj told the news agency.
ACC spokesperson Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya told the news agency that they can provide the total number of complaints lodged with them, but no statistics on the types of crimes and a detailed break-up were available.
An ACC official, preferring anonymity, said over 5,000 complaints had been forwarded to them in the last two years only by police stations in Dhaka.
Every day the ACC receives complaints from its 22 regional offices across Bangladesh.
"The police are not filing cases over these complaints for the last one and a half years. And these are forwarded to the ACC as complaints. It takes a lot of time to file a case with the court after investigations," said the ACC official.
Police said they were aware about the backlog of such complaints by citizens.
"We know the ACC lacks proper manpower, but there's hardly anything we can do about it," said Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP) spokesperson SM Jahangir Alam.
A solution to the crisis solely depends on the government and the ACC, the DMP deputy commissioner said.