Akhtar Hossain, a retired member of the Bangladesh Air Force, was supposed to receive Tk 15,406 in his bank account as his pension in June this year. But that month, he received nearly Tk 400,000 in addition to his regular pension. According to sources familiar with the matter, he received the extra money as part of an arrangement with several officials of the pension office.
Under the arrangement, he kept Tk 100,000 as commission and returned the remaining amount to designated bank accounts controlled by a fraud ring operating around the Chief Controller of Defence Finance (CCDF) office.
In this way, Akhtar received nearly Tk 7.2 million outside his regular pension over a period of more than a year. He kept a fixed commission from the money and returned the rest to the ring. During the same period, however, he was supposed to receive just over Tk 200,000 in pension and festival allowances.
Akhtar is not the only one. Government funds were siphoned off using the bank accounts of many other retired members of the armed forces. A preliminary report by an investigation committee found that 346 arrears pension bills were generated in the names of 26 pensioners, resulting in the embezzlement of Tk 66.8 million (Tk 6,68,70,928).
The fraud was carried out using the government’s digital system for paying pension arrears, iBAS++ (Integrated Budget and Accounting System). First, unauthorised arrears bills were generated and the money was transferred to pensioners’ bank accounts.
They were then paid commissions before returning the remaining money to accounts held by several entities. Later, attempts were made to reconcile the transactions in official records by showing fictitious treasury challans, suggesting that the money had been returned to the government treasury.
Initially, information was found on excess transactions totalling Tk 42.5 million in the bank accounts of 23 pensioners. A subsequent preliminary investigation found that nearly Tk 66.9 million had been transferred to the accounts of 26 pensioners.
On 2 September, two officials of the CCDF office under the Controller General Defence Finance (CGDF) were temporarily suspended over their alleged involvement in the fraud. They are former Audit Superintendent Shaheenur Rahman Khan and Deputy Assistant Finance Controller Ishrat Jahan of the Chief Controller of Defence Finance (Pension and Fund), or CCDF, office.
Several officials of the department believe this is not the final figure. Examining older transactions and arrears pension bills in iBAS++ could uncover more instances in which government funds were siphoned off using the same method. Some sources familiar with the matter claim that an investigation covering the period of the previous Awami League government could uncover evidence of fraud involving at least hundreds of crores of taka.
Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Md Nurul Islam told Prothom Alo, “Everything has been ordered to be investigated.” However, the investigation committee that was formed has been instructed to examine only transactions related to the matter during the past two fiscal years, 2024–25 and 2025–26.
