A group of corrupt officials have allegedly made Bangladeshi citizens’ database venerable with national identity (NID) platform through altering technical specification and accepting lower grade products to the system.

The officials including head of technical evaluation committee have involved in anomalies for personal gain from second phase of Identification System for Enhancing Access to Services (IDEA) project, according to a letter obtained by the Mirror Asia.

The letter has logged with Election Commission additional secretary KM Ali Newaz with carbon copy to office of chief advisor Prof Muhammad Yunus.

The alleged officials are technical system manager Mohammad Ashraf Hussain who headed the technical evaluation committee of the project. IDEA’s additional project director Nuruzzaman Khan and deputy project director Ruhul Mallick, system analyst Akhtaruzzaman and maintenance engineer Mohammed Shohag are involved in anomalies, according to the document.

Ashraf headed technical evaluation committee for GD-10 package as system maintenance engineer of NID wing while Mohammed Shohag is a member of this committee that time.

A case was filed on 9 October against the ousted leader Sheikh Hasina’s son Sajeeb Wazed Joy, former state minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak and 17 others over allegations of selling data of national identity (NID) of over 110 million people of Bangladesh illegally for Tk 200 billion.

Election Commission Secretariat’s former senior maintenance engineer Ashraf Hossain is one the accused of the case of data breach from national identity server of Bangladesh.

Ashraf had allegedly maintained unethical understanding with HPE country manager Abul Kalam Azad and under HPE funding and invitation he visited Malaysia before tender specification preparation. They are also business partner having one resort in Gazipur having another shrimp farm in Khulna.

As a chairperson of tender evaluation committee, Ashraf manipulates the other committee members to accept the critical noncompliance parts of this package and finally awarded to BMIT. He made ‘under table’ transactions which prove we had received from an anonymous source.

Nuruzzaman Khan and Ruhul Mallick were actually working as a syndicate in purchase department and doing unethical activities from long time in this project. Their main stakeholder in these unethical activities is BMIT which disqualified in criteria.

BMIT Executive Director Shamsuzzaman and Nuruzzaman are friends from BTCL and they worked together in that organizations.

Anti-Corruption Commission investigation revealed that the project was awarded to ‘JV of BMIT Solutions’ in partnership with ‘I Threesixty Bangladesh’ without proper pre-evaluation at Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Digital University. There is an allegation that the cost-effectiveness of the project›s allocation was not adequately assessed.

Regarding the allegation, The Mirror Asia tried to communicate with Ashraf for comment, however, his phone found unreachable.