The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and the Income Tax Intelligence and Investigation Unit of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) claimed to have identified a ring involved in syndicating air-tickets on the Middle East route costing huge extra money to the expatriate workers.
There are allegations that this ticket trade syndicate has held the air-ticket trade on Middle East route hostage. It has also been alleged that the syndicate is manipulating the ticket prices of that route.
As a result, expatriate workers have been suffering financially.
It has been known that headed by the Public Security Secretary, a high-level committee, earlier has prepared a report on the matter. Based on that report, the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and the Income Tax Intelligence and Investigation Unit of the National Board of Revenue have started separate investigations against the unscrupulous business syndicate.
The Income Tax Intelligence and Investigation Unit is investigating the issue of tax evasion while the ACC is investigating the issue of overall corruption.
Government sources concerned said that the syndicate has increased the ticket prices of flights bound for the Middle East by almost one and a half times.
The high-level government committee started working following uproar over the issue.
The report of the committee, which consists of members from various government agencies, departments and ministries, has revealed the entire issue of ticket fraud.
The report found primary evidence of ticket fraud and fraud against 11 international airlines, their General Sales Agents (GSAs) and 30 travel agencies.
The report, submitted to the Chief Advisor’s Office, shows that in many cases, tickets were allocated through group bookings without the names of the passengers and kept in stock. Later, they were sold through informal channels like WhatsApp at double or triple the price.
According to sources, one of the specific travel agencies works as the GSA of big airlines like Saudia, Qatar Airways, Salam Air, Jazeera Airways, Oman Air and Thai Airways. By virtue of being the GSA of those airlines, those companies have illegally earned hundreds of crores of taka by blocking cheap tickets without names and selling them at higher prices.
Those travel agencies are also reported to be involved in money laundering abroad and have flats and other businesses worth hundreds of crores of taka in Dubai and London. The initial investigation also found that they had evaded tax of crores of taka.
ACC officials said that those travel agencies have obtained the GSA of about 8 airlines mainly during the regime of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina government and under the umbrella of several influential leaders of the Awami League.
NBR sources said that the bank accounts of that specific travel agency have been frozen on charges of tax evasion.
Tax Commissioner Md. Abdur Rakib said that the investigation into the financial transactions of some specific travel agencies amd their owners is on.
It is worth noting that before the government intervention, the price of tickets from Dhaka to cities like Jeddah, Riyadh, Medina and Dammam had increased by up to 1 lakh 90 thousand taka. The worst affected were migrant workers. As a result of government intervention, the average ticket price for these routes is currently between 48,000 and 50,000 taka, which is about 75 percent less than before.
