Gold trader Monirul held over possession of ‘illegal’ assets 

The Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) has arrested gold businessman Monirul Islam for possession of illegal assets, a firearm and liquor.

Based on intelligence, a team of the elite force led by its Executive Magistrate Palash Kumar Bashu raided Monirul’s six-storey building in Merul Badda of Dhaka Friday night and arrested him with a huge amount of gold ornaments and currencies of different countries.

Director of Rab Media Wing, Lt Col Ashik Billah, disclosed it at a press conference in Dhaka this noon.

During the drive, the Rab members recovered around 600 bhories (One bhori equals to 11.664 grams) of gold ornament, cash Tk 1.9 crore and a foreign-made pistol with four rounds of bullets from Monirul’s residence, Billah said.

Currencies of 10 countries worth Tk 8.27 lakh and liquor were also recovered from the residence.

The elite force also seized two luxurious SUVs without any valid documents during the drive that ended around 11:30am, the Rab official told the press conference.

Later, in a drive at the Autocar Selection owned by Monirul, Rab also seized three more illegal vehicles.

Monirul was a salesman of a clothing shop at the capital’s Gausia Market in 1990, Billah said.

Later, he worked at a crockery shop at Mouchak Market. Then he got involved in the luggage business and started the smuggling of cloth, cosmetic, electric items and mobile parts on Dhaka-Singapore-India route by dodging tax, Billah said.

“At one point, Monirul got involved in gold smuggling, and in a span of time, he became famous as ‘Golden Monir’,” said the Rab’s media wing director, adding: “Monir becomes owner of huge amount of wealth and properties including land and houses in different parts of the capital by developing relations with several government officials.”

Several cases were lodged against Monir with different police stations in the capital in 2007 for his alleged involvement in gold smuggling.

As a land grabber, Monirul grabbed many plots at Purbachal, Badda, Nikunja, Uttara and Keraniganj projects by stealing documents of the Rajdhani Unnayan Kortripokkho (Rajuk), said Rab official Billah, adding that Monirul had confessed to having about 30 plots during the primary interrogation.

In 2019, Rajuk filed a case against Monirul as he kept documents of at least 70 plots under his possession illegally and the trial of the case is still underway.

Apart from this, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has filed a case against him for accumulating a huge amount of wealth and properties without a known source of income.

About the land grabbing, Monirul said he had built up relationships with many influential ministers, officials of the public works department and Rajuk in 2001 and grabbed the plots.

Billah told the press conference that Rab would coordinate with the ACC, CID, and the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to know about the patrons of Monirul.

Responding to a query, Billah, without mentioning name, said Monirul had maintained a good relation with a political party and worked as one of the financiers of the party.