Cash distributor’s address is the house of the post office official, key behind

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The incident happened last year, i.e. June 14, 2025. Just before the end of the holy Eid-ul-Azhar holiday, in the morning, 1 crore 8 lakh taka was robbed on a road in Uttara of the capital. The money belonged to a distributor of ‘Nagad’, the postal department’s digital financial services company.

After that incident, a person named Abdur Rahman filed a case. He introduced himself as a ‘distributor’ of ‘cash’. He mentioned the address of a house in Uttara Sector 13 of Dhaka.

After investigation, it was found that the real owner of the stolen money is a person named Mohammad Tarikuzzaman. He has three distributorships in cash. And the address of the house used in the case is the ancestral home of Additional Director General of Postal Department Zakir Hasan Noor. He himself lives at that address.

Prothom Alo contacted Tarikuzzaman to find out about this strange communication. Tarikuzzaman said that Zakir Hossain is his cousin. To do business in Uttara area, one had to show office. That is why he rented a part of his brother’s six-storey house.

However, Tarikuzzaman’s statement is not so simple when looking at an internal secret list of cash distributors. As of February 2025, the list contains information of a total of 216 distributors. Out of which there are seven distributors in the ‘Government Officer Influenced’ category. Three of them are from Dhaka. They are MR Corporation, MR Corporation-Turag and MR Corporation-Dakshinkhan. Documents say that the applicant of all the three institutions is Mohammad Tarikuzzaman.

MR Corporation’s application was filed on September 26, 2018, and was approved the next day. MR Corporation-Turag application form information says that the application was made on May 27, 2024, approval was also given on the same day. On the other hand, there is no application date in the application form of MR Corporation-Dakshinkhan, but the form has been approved on 27 November 2019.

An analysis of the application also revealed that the same address was used for all three institutions. House No. 25, Road No. 5, Janata Housing, Kafrul area of ​​the capital. However, three different postcodes and post office names have been used in three applications.

An investigation by the Bangladesh Bank’s appointed Administrators and Management Committee on cash management after the July coup revealed that more than Tk 200 crore was transacted monthly from MR Corporation’s three distributorships. 25 lakhs per month from commission only and 15 lakhs per month excluding all expenses.

When Mamato Bhai is a top official in the Department of Posts, the question of influence in appointing distributors has come up, which could create a conflict of interest, it has been discussed. Again, some people are doubting whether government official Zakir Hasan is doing business as a distributor under the identity of his relative.

When asked about this, Tarikuzzaman said, “He did his job, I did mine.”

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As Tarikuzzaman put it simply, the documents show a different scenario. Postal Department documents say that from 2017 to 2023, Zakir Hasan was involved in calling and evaluating tenders and signing contracts for cash-related work; Sometimes he served directly in cash as a representative of the postal department. At this time Tarikuzzaman’s two applications were approved.

In 2017, Zakir Hasan was a member of several committees for the digital financial service partner selection process of the postal department. He was involved in all the stages – selection of initial list of bidders, technical evaluation and final selection. It was through this process that the Department of Posts entered into an agreement with Third Wave Technologies Limited, on the basis of which cash was introduced later.

A proof of Zakir Hasan’s interest in cash is found in a postal department document. In late 2020, he was promoted to the equivalent post of Additional Postmaster General of the Department of Posts. At that time, when he was recommended for the post of a project director, he expressed his disqualification citing ‘not comfortable with technology and physical illness’.

However, in 2021, Zakir Hasan was given the task of overseeing cash by a digital service organization, and he accepted it.

Zakir Hossain holds the post of Additional Director General (Postal Services) of the Directorate of Posts. Apart from this, he is also holding the post of Additional Director General (Planning) since March 30.

Zakir Hasan denied his involvement in any kind of irregularities. He told Prothom Alo, “I was not in charge at the time when the cash distributorship was given.” Although Tarikuzzaman is a relative, I have no involvement with his business. It did not affect the giving of distributorship.

Regarding the use of Uttara’s house address in the case, Zakir Hasan said, “Several people used to rent the ground floor of my house. I did not know whether they were connected with cash or not.’

Public administration expert Feroze Mia sees the matter of Zakir Hasan Noor as a possible ‘pleasure’. He told Prothom Alo, ‘Since he is an officer of the postal department and his cousin has taken the distributorship, the matter should have been reported to the authorities. However, whether he gave any unethical benefits to his brother or not, that also needs to be investigated.

When Kazi Asadul Islam, Director General of the Department of Posts, was contacted about these issues, he told Prothom Alo that no one had made such a complaint to him about Zakir Hasan.