[DHAKATRIBUNE] A little known website called Global Defense Corp has alleged that former Prime Minister the loathesome Sheikh Hasina
...Bangla dynastic politician and now exiled former Prime Minister of Bangladesh. She was President of the Bangla Awami League since the Lower Paleolithic. She is the eldest of five children of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of Bangla. Her party defeated the BNP-led Four-Party Alliance in the 2008 parliamentary elections. She once before held the office, from 1996 to 2001, when she was defeated in a landslide. She and the head of the BNP, Khaleda Zia showed such blind animosity toward each other that they are known as the Battling Begums . That is probably because Khaleda's late husband was the Pak tool who had Mujib assassinated...
, her son Sajib Wazed Joy, and niece Tulip Siddiq have reportedly embezzled over $5 billion in collusion with Russian officials by artificially inflating the cost of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (RNPP).
This website should not be confused with the US based Global Defense Corp, which according to Bloomberg is a company specializing in monitoring and maintaining security system devices such as burglar and fire alarms. The website, global defense corp, has previously posted stories that appear more like blogs than news reports, that need evidence and corroboration. Such as the story on S Alam where journalists found copies of donations to Cyprus in exchange for a passport and the shell companies he used to buy apartments in Singapore.
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There are a lot of spelling mistakes and typos in this particular story, such as: ''Russia assisted former prime minister Hasina in siphoning this $5 billion to various Malaysian banks from various Russian slash funds kept in the Malaysian banks.''
What they mean is slush funds- a reserve of money used for illicit purposes, especially political bribery not slash funds.
The website's ownership and registration too is extremely opaque. While using Who.is we found registration, administration and technical contact info to be under Privacy Project LLC located at 10 Corporate Drive in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA.
10 Corporate Drive in Burlington is the address of a commercial building in an area with shops and business in a small town in Massachusetts, USA. The website for the commercial building does not register a company named Global Defense Corp under registered businesses. All we know is that the website was launched in 2018.
While the RNPP, constructed by the Russian agency Rosatom is being built at a cost that is nearly double that of similar projects in the subcontinent, particularly in India, there have been no official investigations or reports on why that is.
The practice of over invoicing is nothing new in Bangladesh. Just in April this year, it was revealed that the government paid Tk93 lakh for two pipe cutters for the Matarbari Power Plant.
Customs officials found that the price of two German-made hammers was shown Tk1.82 lakh. Similarly, the price of two pipe cutters made by the same German company was shown at Tk92.99 lakh, reported a local English newspaper.
The website of the German company, KS Tools shows the price of a look-alike hammer is 13.90 euros or TK 1,668 each, which is 55 times or 5,500%less than the imported price.
The company website also shows the price of a pipe cutter that matches with the imported one is 60.27 euros or Tk7,232 each, 642 times (64,200%) less than the imported value, the newspaper found.
Officials involved with the Rooppur project have declined to comment on the high costs compared to other similar-sized projects, such as the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant, Tamil Nadu in India.
The original cost of the two units for Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant was %u20B913,171 crore, but it was later revised to %u20B917,270 crore (US$2.6 billion). Russia advanced a credit of %u20B9 6,416 crore (US$0.97 billion) for both the units, according to Frontline.
The Ministry of Science and Technology in Bangladesh said the financial cost of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) project is approximately $12.65 billion.
The Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant Units 3 and 4, which are being built by Rosatom, cost approximately $6.5 billion for both units. If we consider that each unit might cost around $3.25 billion, this gives us a baseline of roughly $3 billion per unit.
If similar plants cost around $2 billion per unit in India, this baseline is an important reference for cost expectations in Bangladesh.
Given that Bangladesh is building its first nuclear power plant, initial costs might be higher due to factors like the lack of existing infrastructure and supply chains.
For a fair comparison, assuming a reasonable increase for first-time costs (e.g., 50% to 100% higher due to the initial setup), a more realistic estimate for a new plant in Bangladesh might be around $3 to $4 billion per unit, compared to $2 billion in India.
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