DHAKA, 4 April 2007 — Two more Bangladeshi former ministers and a lawmaker are among 51 people charged with abetting terrorism.
The ministers and the lawmaker all belong to the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia. Cases have been filed against them in Natore and Rajshahi districts.
The three have been identified as Aminul Haque, former post and telecommunications minister, Ruhul Quddus Talukder Dulu, former state minister for land and Nadim Mostafa, a former BNP lawmaker. Police have arrested nine people in Naldanga and Baghmara areas linked to the case.
Muhidul Islam of village Nandipur had filed a case with Naldanga police while Ayub Ali of village Palashi filed another case with Baghmara police against the 51 people for supporting terrorists.
Twenty-one persons including Dulu and Mostafa were charged with harboring and supporting militants of banned militant outfit Jamatul Mujahedeen Bangladesh and torturing political rivals.
Telenor to List Phone Unit
on Dhaka Stock Exchange
Norway’s Telenor said yesterday it plans to list its GrameenPhone subsidiary on the stock exchange in Bangladesh after rejecting a claim by Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus for control of the telecom firm.
Telenor owns 62 percent of GrameenPhone, Bangladesh’s leading mobile phone company with more than 12 million subscribers. It is also the largest private enterprise in Bangladesh.
Grameen Telecom, a unit of the Yunus-founded Grameen Bank, holds the remaining 38 percent and offered last week to buy another 13 percent for $427 million to get a majority stake, Grameen Telecom chief executive Ashraful Hasan said.
It says that was the original proposal under a 1996 agreement by the Norwegian group to cede control of Grameen Phone within six years. But Telenor’s chief executive said in a statement that the firm would rather list an unspecified percentage of the firm on the Dhaka Stock Exchange and rejected the agreement as a statement of intent and not binding.
“A public listing would bring more Bangladeshi ownership into GrameenPhone,” Telenor President and Chief Executive Officer Jon Fredrik Baksaas said in a statement.
“We think it is important that the people of Bangladesh and all customers of GrameenPhone can become owners of this successful company,” he said.
Yunus used his Nobel Peace Prize lecture last October to plead for Telenor to relinquish control so he could make GrameenPhone “a social business by giving majority ownership to the poor women of Grameen Bank.”
“Someday GrameenPhone will become another example of a big enterprise owned by the poor,” he said to loud applause from the audience, which included Baksaas.
