Presented By

Mosabber Hossain Staff Reporter,

The Daily Prothom AloContributor ,

Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Love to work on investigative reports.

Covered News by Mosabber Hossain

• International War Crimes Tribunal Trial Bangladesh

• Telecom• Climate• Children• Women• Political and social issues.

Acknowledgement

First of all, I want to express my heartfelt thanks towards the Global Investigative Journalism Network and Norwegian foundation for investigative Journalism (SKUP) for accepting my report and thus allowing me to come over here to present my report.

The news is about the largest corruption of telecommunication sector

in Bangladesh.

Introduction• The news is about the

largest corruption case in telecommunication sector in Bangladesh. Influential people belonging to the ruling Awami League party had got nine licenses to set up IGW (international gateway) companies using political influence. They gobbled up government money worth Tk. 1000 crore (£ 872910929500.00).

Introduction, Continue…• The companies were doing business with

the licenses they had got either in the name of former health minister AFM Ruhal Haq, ex-state minister for local government and rural development ministry Jahangir Kabir Nanak, state minister for home Shamsul Haq Tuku, Awami League leaders and MPs Shamim Osman, Bahauddin Nasim and Nasrul Hamid, and ruling party's ally Jatiya Party leader MP Ziauddin Bablu and the family members of the ministers and leaders.

Published News in The Daily Prothom Alo

Impact of this news • The news was published

just before the national election on January 05, 2014. After published this news, people were surprised a lot regarding this huge corruption and it became the talk of the country as well as created a huge debate among the mass people.

Impact of this news, Continue…

• The opposition political party BNP had protested against this corruption. Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) has already stopped their operations cancelling their licenses and filed a case against those companies at lower court of Bangladesh. The case is under trail.

Sources • Our news policy is that we

don't publish any news in our newspaper without any relevant documents. This kind of news is very sensitive. For this reason I collected all kind of documents. I worked for about two months for the corruption news. I had to talk to about 50 different sources.

Sources, Continue… • I used to go to the BTRC

office almost every day and I also had to find out the related documents at the office of the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms. As a result nobody opposed the news and nobody could even send any rejoinder against the news.

Difficulties to prepare a report• When I started to make

the news of corruption, I faced some difficulties. The persons who were involved in the corruption at first, they told me not to publish the news over the issue. But when I continued my investigation to prepare the news item, some unidentified people threatened me over phone and told the accused are very powerful.

• They may stop your carrier. But I did not care them at all. Some accused of corruption offered me money to stop the reporting. But I was very much respectful to my profession. I thought I must publish the news as my mother told me to be honest always. At last the news was published on the 1st page of our daily.

Difficulties to prepare a report, Continue..

Rewards: • In our newspaper, my

news was one of the best news of the year and in 2014 I have received South Asian Inquirer Investigative Journalism Award by Thomson Foundation, London for this investigation report on financial corruption in the telecom sector in Bangladesh.