Latest news with #Mansur
Time of India
01-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
EC to cancel EPIC of Afghan nationals living illegally in Patna house
Lucknow: Following TOI's May 29 report about a house in Patna that allegedly became a hotbed for immigrants with multiple fake Indian identity cards, the Election Commission of India is set to remove their elector's photo identity card (EPIC) from the electoral roll. The move is significant as Bihar assembly polls are around the corner. Jandullah Dad Mohammad, an Afghan national from Paktika province, was living at Patna's Wakil Anwer House, impersonating as Rehan, son of Kabir, alongside his brother Mansur. After entering India on a six-day medical visa in December 2019, Jandullah went off the radar in Delhi. By 2020, he had managed to obtain a complete set of fake Indian identity documents. His EPIC (AFS3853934), Indian passport (C6978659), Aadhaar card (322874855132), PAN card (ETXPR8222K), driving license (BR0120210005369), SBI bank passbook (39914603822), Patna Municipal Corporation issued birth certificate (B-2019 10-90097 025254), and even a ration card painted a convincing picture of an Indian citizen. "We are now preparing to revoke the EPIC issued in the name of Rehan," said electoral registration officer (ERO) Raghvendra Pratap Singh. The accused foreign national is currently lodged in Lucknow jail after being caught by the Bureau of Immigration from Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport on May 19. The ECI's consolidated electoral list, published on Jan 7, 2025, under a special summary revision, revealed that the Wakil Anwer House has 12 male occupants, all in their 20s and 30s except one, with no women registered. At least four of them shared identical details: Same age, same father's name (Kabir), and EPICs. Kabir's real identity has been established as Dad Mohammad Khan. His elder son Mansur, who left for Dubai more than six months ago, is registered in electoral roll with two EPICs AFS4130290, AFS4127999. Another resident, Mohammad Sher Khan, also had dual EPICs AFS4129953 and AFS4125266. "Currently, Kabir is missing from Wakil Anwer House, with no confirmation of his existence, though locals confirm his presence in Patna 7-8 years ago. We have cancelled Mansur's and Mohammad Sher Khan's EPICs... One individual cannot have two EPICs," said ERO Raghvendra. He added, "The owner of Wakil Anwer House has not returned to Patna from New Delhi till date. He has now assured to be back around June 9, following which he would furnish details of everyone living in his property."
Time of India
01-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
TOI IMPACT: ECI to cancel Rehan's EPIC and other suspects of Patna's Wakil Anwer house
LUCKNOW: Following the TOI report about a house in Patna, that allegedly became home of suspected illegal immigrants who had acquired fake Indian identity cards, the , is now preparing to remove their EPIC (electoral photo identity card) from the electoral roll. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The move is significant, as Bihar assembly polls are around the corner. Jandullah Dad Mohammad, an Afghan national from the volatile Paktika province, impersonating as Rehan, son of Kabir, was residing at Patna's Wakil Anwer House along with his brother Mansur. After entering India on a six-day medical visa in December 2019, he vanished from Delhi's radar. By 2020, he had acquired a full suite of fake Indian IDs. His EPIC (AFS3853934), Indian passport (C6978659), Aadhaar card (322874855132), PAN card (ETXPR8222K), driving license (BR0120210005369), SBI bank passbook (39914603822), municipal corporation Patna issued birth certificate (B-2019 10-90097 025254), and even a ration card painted a convincing picture of an Indian citizen. 'We are now preparing to revoke the EPIC AFS3853934 issued in the name of Rehan, son of Kabir,' said electoral registration officer (ERO) Raghvendra Pratap Singh. The accused foreign national is currently lodged in Lucknow jail after being caught by Bureau of Immigration from Chaudhary Charan Singh International Airport on May 19 evening. The ECI's consolidated electoral list, published on January 7, 2025, under a special summary revision, revealed that the Wakil Anwer House has 12 male occupants, all in their 20s and 30s except one, with no women registered. At least four of them shared identical details: Same age, same father's name (Kabir), and EPICs. Kabir's real identity has been established as Dad Mohammad Khan. His elder son Mansur who left for Dubai more than six months ago, is registered in electoral roll with two EPICs AFS4130290, AFS4127999. Another resident, Mohammad Sher Khan, also had dual EPICs: AFS4129953 and AFS4125266. 'Currently, Kabir is absent from Wakil Anwer House, with no confirmation of his existence, though locals confirm his presence in Patna 7-8 years ago. We have cancelled Mansur's and Mohammad Sher Khan's EPICs . One individual cannot have two EPICs,' said ERO Raghvendra. He added, 'The owner of Wakil Anwer House has not returned to Patna from New Delhi till date. He has now assured to return around June 9, following which he would furnish details of everyone living in his property.'
The Guardian
29-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘My target is those who have looted my banks': Bangladesh's bank governor chases vanished assets
Diminutive and softly spoken, Dr Ahsan Mansur does not project the image of a man able to strike fear into the hearts of hardened kleptocrats. Yet Bangladesh's central bank governor has rattled someone powerful, if the events of recent days are anything to go by. Mansur, 74, has been in London this month, meeting Foreign Office minister Catherine West, NGOs, lawyers and experts in tracing assets. They have promised to help him track down tens of billions of dollars in funds allegedly stolen from the south Asian country's banking system under the regime of Sheikh Hasina, the autocrat deposed in last year's student-led revolution. In advance of his visit, several MPs were sent emails attempting to discredit Mansur. It is not clear who is behind the campaign, which one MP termed 'disinformation'. But Mansur is in little doubt. 'The asset recovery effort … is to go after those people who have diverted massive amounts of resources from Bangladesh and, in particular, from the banking system,' he told the Observer. 'We know the names, we all know the names, and they or their operators are putting it together [the alleged disinformation campaign]. 'The sole purpose is to diminish my reputation and show that 'whatever he says is not what he is'.' The emails linked to articles written by 'journalists' whose names turned out to be fake and whose pictures the Observer found to be stock images. They focused particularly on the expensive clothing and apparent financial comfort of Mansur's daughter, Mehreen. If Mansur was investigating the unexplained wealth of Bangladeshis, they suggested, why was his own family excluded? 'She is an American citizen, she has little to do with Bangladesh,' he said. 'Why [does] her dress code have to be different from an American? My advisers tell me to ignore it. Or I can quit. But if I quit, they win.' The most bemusing part was an email sent by one British reputation management firm that accused him of being 'prepared to impugn' Tulip Siddiq, the UK's former City minister and niece of Sheikh Hasina. Siddiq resigned from the ministerial role, which included oversight of anti-corruption, earlier this year after Dhaka's anti-corruption commission filed a criminal case against her. She has denied all wrongdoing. Mansur may be leading Bangladesh's asset tracking endeavour, but he says he is not involved in the accusations against Siddiq. 'I've never said anything to do with her situation,' said Mansur. 'My primary target is those who have looted my banks.' London may be the key to that mission. The Trump administration's decision to gut USAID has choked off one funding stream for the transitional government in Dhaka, as it tries to put the country's economy on a sound footing. That leaves the UK as the friendliest major economy, albeit one with a potentially less savoury role to play in hunting Bangladeshi assets. As investigations by the Guardian, Financial Times and Al Jazeera have shown, some of the allies of the Hasina regime now being investigated for corruption have poured hundreds of millions of pounds into London property. 'It's one of the favoured destinations for these kleptocrats, not just from Bangladesh but from other countries. It's a haven, no question about it,' said Mansur. 'How much has been repatriated ever from Britain? Not much.' But the UK, he says, is very supportive of Bangladesh's plan to recoup misappropriated assets, a notoriously difficult and time-consuming task. Experts from the National Crime Agency have flown out to Dhaka to advise investigators there, while private companies are helping too. Earlier this month, Mansur hosted a meeting of dozens of law firms, litigation funders and asset trackers who are keen to help out, albeit more in the hope of a fee than out of a moral imperative. So oversubscribed was the summit that late sign-ups had to join via a spillover Zoom call. 'We consider that British law has a lot of strong provisions against these kinds of activities,' said Mansur. 'The [English] legal system has a reputation and if we can have some victories here, we can achieve similar victories in other jurisdictions. 'We are all newcomers in this game. I've never had experience dealing with these kinds of kleptocrats and asset recovery issues.' Back home in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi authorities are hoping to secure legal judgments against a clutch of major business and political figures accused of corruption. The next step, according to Mansur, would be a formal request to the British government to impose freezing orders against assets held in the UK. 'It's part of the sanctions process,' he said. 'We are trying to accelerate it. We'd like to see significant action on that front this year.' He acknowledges that the ball is now in Dhaka's court, with evidence-gathering key to ensuring that the UK and the wider international community can trace, freeze and repatriate allegedly misappropriated assets. 'This is the money of the common people who deposited [it] in banks and it's been taken out with complete disregard to the law of the land,' said Mansur. Plugging the resulting holes in the banking system is the starting point for stabilising the Bangladeshi economy long term, he said. Getting that process right is one reason why he came out of retirement in his 70s. 'It's very bad for my health because my blood pressure is up and down. The doctor says take a rest and here I am doing 15 meetings a day.' But Mansur, who spent more than 25 years working at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, could not resist being there at the start of Bangladesh's next chapter. 'During Sheikh Hasina's time, the government offered me the governorship. I politely refused. 'I could not accept because I knew she'd fire me in three months and then I'd have to keep my mouth shut or leave the country. I didn't want to do either.' The speed with which Hasina's Awami League regime fell surprised Mansur. The fact of the regime's demise did not. 'I never thought I'd see this revolution in my lifetime. She used to control everything in the country, it was like the Hitler regime. 'But I knew one thing: their economic mismanagement was going to bring them down. 'Everything happened much faster than what anybody could have thought. It's a major relief, hopefully for much better things to come.'
The Guardian
24-03-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
MPs think they may have been targets of ‘disinformation' over Bangladesh inquiry
British MPs believe they may have been targeted by a 'disinformation' campaign aimed at discrediting the man leading efforts to trace funds allegedly laundered from Bangladesh into the UK. MPs raised the alarm after receiving emails about Ahsan Mansur, who was installed as the central bank governor of Bangladesh last year, after a student-led revolution swept away the autocratic government of Sheikh Hasina. Mansur has been in London seeking help from the government and private companies to track down billions of dollars in assets allegedly stolen by allies of the Hasina regime, some of which he believes may have been used to buy UK property. His visit has already been overshadowed by an escalating row involving Hasina's niece, the former City minister Tulip Siddiq, who resigned from the role this year after Dhaka's anti-corruption commission (ACC) filed a criminal case against her. She has denied all wrongdoing. Now MPs fear that Britain's efforts to assist Bangladesh could be further clouded by an apparent smear campaign against Mansur involving news articles by fake journalists. MPs in the 47-strong all-party parliamentary group (APPG) on responsible tax and corruption received emails before a session on Monday with Mansur. The sender, who claimed to be a journalist, sent links to a website called International Policy Digest, featuring articles about apparent displays of wealth by Mansur's daughter and questioning why she was not being investigated. Neither of the articles' supposed authors appears to have any other profile as a journalist. The Guardian found that pictures of them were actually stock images. Mansur and MPs on the committee raised concerns that the emails were part of a concerted disinformation campaign. Mansur, a former IMF official, who previously lived and worked in Washington, said he believed that people under investigation for money laundering were trying to 'diminish my reputation and target me in various ways'. He added that his daughter was a US citizen who had little to do with Bangladesh. One APPG member, Rupa Huq, received a separate email from a UK public relations firm called Palatine Communications, also linking to International Policy Digest. The email said that if Mansur was prepared to 'impugn the integrity of Tulip Siddiq' then he and his family should also face scrutiny. Mansur said he had never made any comments about Siddiq. However, he is a key figure in the transitional government led by Mohammad Yunus, whose ACC accused Siddiq, along with her family members, amid an investigation into a 2013 deal with Russia that allegedly overinflated the price of a nuclear power plant. Huq said it was 'highly unusual' to receive such an email and compared it to demonstrations that have targeted her speaking about Bangladesh in parliament. She said both were 'designed to intimidate and interfere with parliament and MPs' normal work'. Members of the APPG are understood to have referred the emails to parliamentary cyber security advisers, as well as to the parliamentary foreign affairs committee, which is investigating disinformation. 'If it is the case that this communication is an attempt to mislead UK politicians when it comes to a very serious corruption scandal, then I think we should be very concerned,' said APPG member Phil Brickell. 'I urge the relevant parliamentary authorities to investigate thoroughly – we must get to the bottom of who paid for this, and why, in order to understand how we can best protect ourselves.' A spokesperson for Palatine Communications said: 'Our client instructions are confidential. In sending the email in question, we acted on our own initiative. 'We have nothing to do with, and know nothing of, the authorship of this article, but nor did we ever claim it represented the gospel truth. Like numerous articles from many media outlets, it raises legitimate concerns about the current situation in Bangladesh that we believe are worthy of MPs' consideration.' A spokesperson for International Policy Digest said the person who had actually written the articles had 'wished to remain anonymous', adding that they were confident that the content was 'fairly accurate'.
