The corruption rate from the government's allocation for the roads and highways sector was between 23 to 40 percent during the period of fiscal year FY 2009-10 to FY 2022-23.

The government allocated Tk 169,449 crore for the Roads and Highways Department, of which 23-40 percent or equivalent to Tk 29,230 crore and Tk 50,835 crore was embezzled, said a report of Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB).

The anti-graft watchdog published this report in the capital on Wednesday (October 9).

Executive Director of TIB Dr Iftekharuzzaman said a syndicate involving politicians, bureaucrats and contractors were involved in corruption while implementing projects for public interest.

These corruption was institutionalized from lower level to the highest level and around 40-43 percent of the money went missing in the bribery of Roads and Highways Department, he pointed out.

"Now if we cannot break the tripartite syndicate, no anti-corruption programme will succeed," he said.

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In response to a query Dr Iftekharuzzaman said, “We sought information about various projects of the Roads and Highways Department, we were denied a lot of information. Our expectation is that information is disclosed publicly, but the reality is that some people have been removed from the organisation but the institutional practices have not been changed yet.”

Responding to another question, the Executive Director of TIB said, "Our research report is only about the projects under implementation with domestic financing. However, there were corruption in foreign-funded projects as well."

According to the researchers, the projects completed between the FY2017-18 to FY2021-22 were included in the scope of this study (the implementation period of these projects is from FY2010-11 to FY2018-19).

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