Lightning Round Presentation, Mosabber Hossain Ribon #gijc15

2. Presented By
Mosabber Hossain
Staff Reporter,
The Daily Prothom Alo
Contributor ,
Thomson Reuters Foundation.

3. Love to work on investigative reports.

4. Covered News by Mosabber Hossain
• International War Crimes Tribunal Trial
Bangladesh
• Telecom
• Climate
• Children
• Women
• Political and social issues.

5. 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.

6. The news is about the largest
corruption of telecommunication sector
in Bangladesh.

7. 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).

8. 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.

9. Published News in
The Daily Prothom Alo

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. • 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..

16. 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.