Bangladesh’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) itself filed a corruption case against Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (Caab) official Mohd Aminul Hashib.
Yet little more than a year later, the same agency formally told the government that no case was pending against him. Armed with that letter, Hashib was promoted from executive engineer to superintendent engineer.
The contradiction emerges from ACC and Caab documents reviewed by TIMES of Bangladesh.
Multiple officials familiar with the matter said the clearance was issued to Aminul Hashib in exchange for undue benefits, through collusion among officials within the Anti-Corruption Commission.
Transparency International Bangladesh Executive Director Iftekharuzzaman told TIMES that if a corruption case against Hasib was still pending, the ACC had itself engaged in corruption by issuing the clearance and had effectively facilitated further wrongdoing.
“Such corruption by the ACC as an institution is completely unacceptable,” he said, stressing that those responsible must be identified and held accountable.
On 27 January 2025, the ACC filed a case against Hashib and 11 others over the alleged embezzlement of nearly Tk150 crore from the runway expansion and new terminal construction projects at Cox’s Bazar International Airport.
The accused were charged with colluding to abuse their authority, violating procurement rules, inflating project costs, bypassing approval procedures and awarding work above the estimated price to a preferred contractor that was unqualified and non-responsive.
According to the ACC’s First Information Report (FIR), nearly Tk150 crore was allegedly misappropriated and shared among those involved by carrying out work through local company Aeroness International Limited under the cover of a foreign contractor.
The first accused in the case is Tarique Ahmed Siddique, former military adviser to ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Other accused include former civil aviation and tourism ministry senior secretary Md Mohibul Haque, former joint secretary Zanendra Nath Sarker, former Caab chairman M Mafidur Rahman, former chief engineer Md Abdul Malek, engineer Md Habibur Rahman, Aeroness International Managing Director Mahbubul Anam, and BNP lawmaker and Aeroness director Luthfullahel Mazed Babu.
Hashib is the ninth accused in the case. ACC records identify him as a former project director of the Cox’s Bazar airport development, runway expansion and international passenger terminal construction projects.
Former project directors Shariful Islam and Md Shafiqul Islam, along with current project director Md Yunus Bhuiyan, are also among the accused.
Hashib was therefore not named in the case merely because he was a Caab official. He had served as project director of the very projects at the centre of the alleged corruption.
People familiar with the matter said irregularities of such scale in a project would be difficult to carry out without the involvement or cooperation of project management.
But about 13 months after filing the case, ACC produced a starkly different account.
In a letter dated 11 March 2026, issued in response to a query from the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism, the commission stated that “no case is under investigation or trial” against Hashib.
ACC Public Relations Officer Md Aktarul Islam told TIMES that the agency had given the “no case” response to a query related to Hashib’s promotion. He could not explain how the ACC had declared that no case existed against an official whom the agency itself had named as an accused in its FIR.
Former ACC Director General Md Maidul Islam described the episode as a serious offence under the commission’s own laws and rules.
“There are clear indications here of shielding an accused from liability, creating an opportunity for the accused to evade justice, providing false information to the government, collusion and possible bribery,” he said. “The ACC officials involved must face departmental action.”
Three and a half months after the ACC letter, Caab promoted Hashib on 30 June 2026 to superintendent engineer (civil), a Grade-4 post. The following day, he was posted to the Civil Circle Project.
Aminul Hashib declined to comment on the matter, citing official restrictions on speaking to the media.
Significantly, Caab’s own promotion order states that the authority reserves the right to amend or cancel a promotion if any “adverse or incorrect information” about an officer subsequently emerges.
