Dhaka: The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the USA is interested to provide support to Bangladesh Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) to help it prevent and fight corruption in Bangladesh.

Responding a letter of the Commission, the FBI of the US Department of Justice has recently sent an official letter to ACC Chairman Iqbal Mahmood through email, saying it supports the Commission’s efforts to ensure that Bangladesh is a country free from corruption and it is looking forward to working with the ACC to ensure wellbeing of an important partner country.

"Recently, we’ve received an official letter from the US intelligence agency where it shows its interest to work with the ACC," ACC Secretary Abu M Mustafa Kamal told news agency United News of Bangladesh (UNB).

Earlier, the ACC sent the letter to the FBI requesting it to pave the way for signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to jointly foster international cooperation in preventing and fighting corruption through effective and efficient mutual assistance. The Commission also sent a draft of the MoU with the letter to the FBI.

According to official sources, the ACC has sought FBI assistance to fight graft in the country in line with the Article 48 of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, which encourages state parties to enter into a bilateral or multilateral agreement on direct cooperation between their law enforcement agencies.

The FBI in its letter has asked the ACC to contact the Legal Attache Office of the US Embassy in Dhaka since its staff are prepared to discuss the MoU and work with the ACC to build a partnership.

Mustafa Kamal said the Commission continues negotiations with the US Embassy in Dhaka to finalise the MoU and sign the deal with the FBI as soon as possible.

According to the draft MoU prepared by the ACC, each party will take necessary steps to encourage and promote cooperation in providing each other (voluntarily or upon request) with the initial information of relevance for prevention of corruption and sharing best practices in carrying out the information gathering and detecting corruption related offenses.      

Both parties will initiate joint projects and activities, including education, training and research, to prevent and combat corruption in a comprehensive way and will share studies and research on anti-corruption measures apart from taking other collaborative activities in the area of preventing and combating graft as deemed necessay.

According to a top official of the Commission, the ACC has also taken a move to sign MoU with some other countries, which have success in checking corruption, such as Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Bhutan, Austria, Mongolia and Russia to exchange mutual cooperation among those countries.

The national anti-graft body has already sent letters to six countries and is negotiating with the countries to sign agreements in this regard.