BNP spent a lot on lobbying by US firm: Shahriar

Shahriar Alam, state minister for foreign affairs

Dhaka, Jan 17 - State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam on Monday said he has proof how much money the BNP-Jamaat clique has spent on lobbying by a US firm in the last five years.

He made the claim while speaking on thanksgiving motion on President Abdul Hamid’s speech in Parliament.

Shahriar said the first document he has had is about hiring a lobbyist, Akin Company Associates, in the United States in 2015.

“An agreement was signed with the address of BNP's Nayapaltan office. The agreement was valid for three years and US$ 50,000 was given to it per month meaning that they paid six lakh US dollars first and two million US dollars in total in three years,” he said.

The state minister said he has 10 such documents and showed all those in parliament. Each political party submits its accounts on expenditure and income to the Election Commission, he said.

“BNP has to ask itself whether this money has been sent with the approval of the Bangladesh Bank! If not, we want an investigation into it to ascertain whether orphans’ money has been syphoned off abroad to pay to the lobbyist farm,” he said.

Shahriar said the future of Bangladesh will be determined by its 16 crore people and no country in the world, no matter how powerful they are, can fix Bangladesh’s future.

“If we’ve problems, we’ll discuss that in Parliament, or we’ll take to the streets. We’ll solve the problems there. We’ll go to the Election Commission. We’ll go to the President,” he insisted. – UNB