Finding G: The general with a moustache

At a meeting in London in September 2015, the fabled “Mr. G” was introduced to senior executives of Oberthur, a French technology company.

Although they were meeting for the first time, their collaboration on Bangladesh’s national identity (NID) card project had been quietly set in motion long before. Mr. G, the man who stood to pocket tens of millions in bribes, tied together a multi-layered, tightly-knit network. 

The London rendezvous took place, however, at least a month after the World Bank caught wind of the scheme and set its sights on the network, suspecting collusion and bribery. 

An Oberthur staffer would tell the World Bank that Mr. G “was presented as an advisor to the Prime Minister, and that ‘you can guess that this guy has some influence.’” Sanctions Board Decision No. 118 | World Bank Group | April 24th of 2019

The World Bank’s seven-member tribunal and a French settlement document referred to him only as “G”. Internal correspondence among those involved called him “the General” — a retired military officer turned adviser, distinguished by his trademark moustache.

Mr. G was never publicly named though.

For years, Netra News chased the story through Washington, Paris, London, Geneva and Dhaka, piecing together the anatomy of a transnational corruption scheme.

Drawing on thousands of pages of court filings, property records, corporate disclosures, official memos, and interviews, our investigation lays bare what is arguably the most prominent international bribery case involving a top Bangladeshi official that has gone largely unnoticed in Bangladesh, despite being detailed in public records and legal findings overseas.

The question at the heart of our investigation — who is G?

Only one man matched the profile: Major General (retired) Tarique Ahmed Siddique, the then prime minister’s relative and most trusted security tsar throughout her 15-and-a-half-year tenure. Of the seven formal advisers attached to her office — all of whom held cabinet rank — Siddique was the only one with a military background.

He was also the only one at the time to sport a moustache.

The investigation also underscores the limits of global accountability when the target is a well-connected foreign official. Even as British and French investigators circled closer to the man at the scheme’s heart, Netra News found that their own government representatives were shaking his hand, competing for favour as Dhaka considered its next purchase of fighter jets.

The well-documented charges carried profound public interest implications, not least because they originated from the World Bank, which had long bankrolled Bangladesh’s development with billions in soft loans. A scandal of this scale, laid bare in public documents, might ordinarily have dominated headlines for weeks in many countries. 

A former military officer associated with the NID contract confirmed to Netra News that “G” was indeed Siddique. The World Bank investigators said they had matched the code-name to a real person using emails, text messages and witness testimony. French prosecutors, alerted by Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA), would later raid the Paris headquarters of Oberthur and seize further evidence.

According to tribunal findings, €730,000 was arranged for Siddique in exchange for the original contract and its first expansion. French court papers show, once a lucrative security-hologram add-on was folded into the deal, the overall sum originally set aside for him rose to roughly €6.1 million — about Tk 88 crore at today’s exchange rates.

Tiger IT, the Bangladeshi subcontractor, was banned from World Bank-funded projects for nearly a decade; its chief executive, Ziaur Rahman, for six years; and a supplier for one. Oberthur, the French company, received a lighter three-year debarment after cooperating with investigators, while its successor company, IDEMIA, paid €8 million to settle with French authorities.

Siddique, however, has faced no sanction at all.

Since Hasina’s fall from power in August 2024, the general — also the brother of Hasina’s sister’s husband — is believed to have slipped out of the country. Together with the former prime minister, he has since been charged in several cases alleging crimes against humanity and corruption, though none relates to the NID affair. 

Reached through family members, Siddique did not respond to requests for comment.

The World Bank’s Integrity Vice-Presidency declined to discuss the matter. “To protect the integrity of investigations and the safety of witnesses, we do not confirm, deny or disclose details regarding INT investigations,” said spokesperson Stephanie A. Crockett in a statement.

Antoine Jocteur-Monrozier from the French prosecutor’s office provided Netra News with the settlement document but refused to comment further. Britain’s National Crime Agency would not confirm its involvement, though court papers identify it. 

Alice Ferré, responding on behalf of IDEMIA, the successor to Oberthur, said the company had co-operated fully and settled the case without admission of guilt.

Tiger IT, for its part, told Netra News it “firmly and consequently dispute[s] being involved in any bribery scheme.”

Bangladesh’s Election Commission did not reply to written questions.

Meanwhile, Siddique’s family has prospered at home and abroad.

In January, The Financial Times reported that his wife, Shaheen Siddique, tried to obtain Maltese “golden passports” for herself and their daughter, presenting a Malaysian bank statement showing $2.7 million in her name. Netra News has verified the account’s existence and traced further Malaysian real-estate holdings in her name.

Land registry records in the UK show that their daughter, Bushra Siddique, purchased a £1.9 million house in London with her husband in 2018 — just two years after finishing college and only months after completing an internship programme. Netra News found no evidence, however, that the purchase was funded by the alleged bribe money.

In Dhaka, the country’s anti-corruption agency recently determined that the former general — whose official advisory salary should not have exceeded $40,000 per annum — had acquired a multi-storey house and an apartment in two of the city’s most exclusive neighbourhoods, Baridhara and Gulshan, three residential plots in Basundhara, another posh neighbourhood, two farmhouses, and 16 acres of land on the outskirts of the capital. Officially, the assets were valued at Tk 38 crore (approximately $3.1 million). 

Unofficially, however, the leading newspaper Prothom Alo estimates their market value could be up to 20 times higher.

The search for “G”

To World Bank investigators, Tiger IT claimed that “G” was a fictional figure — invented, they said, to trick Oberthur into paying money, and one Oberthur executive once voiced the same suspicion. But company emails and multiple witness statements told a different story.

Two Oberthur staff members told investigators they had met the general face to face in London. “First of all, ‘G’ for me is General...I always heard about ‘G’ as a General,” one said. “Very influential on this project...I met with him.” Sanctions Board Decision No. 118 | World Bank Group | April 24th of 2019

Investigators also uncovered an internal email dating to that period, in which Oberthur staff discussed an upcoming meeting with “G,”  the government official who had secured the contract and later expanded it in return for a cut.

Evidence seized by the French authorities also corroborates the link: “The investigation identified G as a senior public official, an adviser to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.”

That Tarique Siddique was the adviser identified in witness accounts and emails as “G” was evident not only because he was the sole general in Hasina’s formal advisory council, but also due to one other distinctive feature: his signature facial hair.

“INT showed one of those employees a photograph of three individuals,” the World Bank filing reads. “And that employee stated that ‘I met this person with the mustache introduced by [Ziaur Rahman] as G.’ The person with the mustache in that photograph was the Government Official.” Sanctions Board Decision No. 118 | World Bank Group | April 24th of 2019

Except for Siddique, all six of Hasina’s other formal advisers during the 2014–2018 period — when the alleged corruption took place — were clean-shaven men with no military background: three bureaucrats, an academic, a businessman, and a journalist.

Seven Advisers to Sheikh Hasina (2014–2018)

Hossain Toufique Imam

Political Adviser

Civil Servant

Mashiur Rahman

Economic Affairs Adviser

Civil Servant

Gowher Rizvi

International Affairs Adviser

Academic

Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury

Power, Energy & Mineral Resources

Civil Servant

Tarique Ahmed Siddique

Defense and Security Adviser

Military Officer

The only adviser who had a military background — and sported a moustache.

Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury

Media and Information Affairs

Journalist

Sajeeb Wazed Joy

ICT Affairs Adviser

Businessman

Photos: pmo.gov.bd / Wikimedia Commons

Foreign travel logs obtained by Netra News do not place Rahman and Siddique in London at the same time in 2015 — though it remains plausible that Rahman used foreign passports. Local press reports indicate that Rahman held at least one US passport. Netra News also found that he had shown interest in the same Malta golden passport scheme that Siddique’s wife sought for herself and their daughter.

Tiger IT, for its part, maintains that its executives “do not recall” any such encounter. IDEMIA, Oberthur’s successor company, would not make its employees available for interview.

The architecture of corruption

The chain of events surrounding the NID scheme began in 2011, when the World Bank approved a $195 million loan (about Tk 1,500 crore) to fund Bangladesh’s digitised biometric voter-registration scheme. Although the Election Commission oversaw the contract, its project unit was staffed largely by military officers seconded to civilian duty. That military back-channel would later prove decisive.

After years of groundwork, the Commission invited bids in April 2014. Oberthur Technologies, a Paris-based security-printing firm, won. Its Bangladeshi subcontractor was Tiger IT, led by Ziaur Rahman.

The World Bank investigators later discovered the competition had been rigged long before the first bid was filed.

Eight months before the bid was even launched, Rahman had emailed Oberthur and another supplier a copy of the confidential specifications of the future contract, soliciting their input on clauses that would “block” other rivals. He drew on both companies to reshape the tender so precisely that rival firms would struggle to meet its terms.

Tiger IT did not deny possessing insider information but argued that both the Bangladesh government and the Election Commission regarded it as “a trusted adviser” and had merely sought its input on the contract — an explanation the World Bank tribunal rejected as unjustified.

Rahman’s access to privileged insider information, investigators concluded, was made possible by his relationship with Siddique. One of Rahman’s relatives told Netra News he was a regular visitor to the general’s home at the time. Within the industry, it was widely understood that Siddique held sway over the army-run project, despite having no formal authority over the constitutionally independent Election Commission.

A senior French diplomat then posted in Dhaka told Netra News they had actively courted the defence adviser on Oberthur’s behalf, during what they described as a particularly fraught phase of the project, underscoring just how widely recognised the general’s influence had become.

The diplomat spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press. Rahman’s relative also requested anonymity in order to avoid straining family ties.

The Election Commission formally awarded the contract in December 2014 and signed it a month later. Soon thereafter, Siddique shepherded cabinet approval to enlarge the order from 70 million to 90 million cards. “He called a few people,” Rahman wrote about the episode in an email, referring to Siddique. “He ensured that there will be a [cabinet committee on government purchase] meeting on Sunday...He committed his full support to speed up things.” Sanctions Board Decision No. 118 | World Bank Group | April 24th of 2019

In return, Oberthur agreed to pay a €730,000 bribe, disguised as a bill for “training courses” that never took place. French investigators traced the payment to March 2015. As one Oberthur manager wrote to a colleague: “For G to increase 20m at contract signature, he has to get something out of this.” Sanctions Board Decision No. 118 | World Bank Group | April 24th of 2019

A second, more lucrative arrangement followed that September, according to both the World Bank and French documents. Oberthur initially paid €2.16 million for anti-counterfeiting holograms, at a grossly inflated price, routing the payment through the British account of Decatur, a UK-based supplier where Ziaur Rahman owned a stake. French court papers spell out the ruse: “This set-up allowed Tiger IT and Decatur to sell materials to Oberthur at elevated prices and funnel the surplus to a Bangladeshi public official identified as ‘G’.” Convention judiciaire d'intérêt public entre le Procureur de la République financier près le tribunal judiciaire de Paris et la société Idemia France | Parquet National Financier | June 20th of 2022

Half of the €10.8 million hologram contract — about €5.4 million — was earmarked for Siddique, the French document reads. However, senior Oberthur executives were wary of paying the full amount upfront.

In internal emails, one executive warned another: “We need to keep some leverage until the end.” Otherwise, he cautioned, the general “will not care anymore.” Accordingly, a total of €2.4 million was paid out in four instalments, between September 2015 and January 2016, leaving Siddique’s likely share at roughly €1.2 million for that phase alone.

But Rahman also held influence in his own right.

According to one relative, he was also close to Khandakar Masrur Hossain, then the husband of Hasina’s daughter, Saima Wazed, who was also Siddique’s niece.

In a statement, Tiger IT acknowledged the friendship. “He has known Mr. Hossain since their student days, well before Mr. Hossain’s marriage to Ms. Wazed,” the statement reads. “Mr. Rahman remained a friend to Mr. Hossain also after his separation from Ms. Wazed several years ago.”

Tiger IT had previously secured a contract in 2008 with the same military-run unit of the Election Commission, and later partnered with the army’s Bangladesh Machine Tools Factory during the Covid-19 pandemic, the same agency that took over the NID programme after the World Bank backed out of the project. 

In their filings, French prosecutors also highlighted this very network. Ziaur Rahman “was described as an influential business intermediary in Asia in the identity industry,” the legal paper reads. “Documents seized during a search established his close family ties to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, as well as his close professional ties with the Bangladeshi army and the Bangladesh Election Commission.” Convention judiciaire d'intérêt public entre le Procureur de la République financier près le tribunal judiciaire de Paris et la société Idemia France | Parquet National Financier | June 20th of 2022

Diplomatic courtship

Meanwhile, in Paris and London, even as lawyers and police pored over balance sheets and chains of communication, their own governments were busy courting the very general they suspected. 

In early 2020 – already years into an ongoing corruption inquiry – France’s air force chief General Philippe Lavigne led a high-profile delegation to Dhaka and held private talks with Siddique. The visit, followed by a trip by minister of armed forces, Florence Parly, and reciprocal state visits by Prime Minister Hasina and President Emmanuel Macron, formed part of France’s aggressive push to sell Dassault Rafale fighter-jets and other military hardware. Siddique, effectively functioning as Bangladesh’s defence minister, held a decisive sway over procurement.

The British government was no less determined.

As far back as late 2016, acting on a World Bank referral, British authorities raided the London offices and one of two flats owned by Rahman, according to one of his relatives. Tiger IT disputes that it was a raid but acknowledges that the NCA “collect[ed]” documents from Rahman at the time. The properties — including a £2.4 million flat — had been acquired shortly after his company had won the NID contract, according to land records. When the NCA alerted the French authorities months later, it did not drop the case. Instead, its investigation continued in parallel for nearly five more years, combing through “millions of paper-based and electronic documents.”

Yet even as the NCA inquiry progressed, UK high commissioner in Dhaka, Robert Dickson, joined other European envoys between late-2019 and early-2020 in pressing Siddique to back the Eurofighter Typhoon, a consortium aircraft developed by the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain. Defence Secretary Ben Wallace went a step further, endorsing a letter, seen by Netra News, to Sheikh Hasina. Should Bangladesh opt for the aircraft, the letter pledged “strengthened defence co-operation.” Letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina | Ministries of Defence of Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Spain | January 2020

Neither the French embassy nor the UK high commission in Dhaka responded to a request for comment.

Netra News found no evidence that the criminal inquiry was ever used as a negotiating tool by either government, nor that Siddique’s anonymity in legal filings was linked to arms talks. His diplomatic protection, in any case, would have made prosecution by a foreign government exceedingly difficult, legal experts said. The intersection, nonetheless, was striking, said Susan Hawley, executive director at Spotlight on Corruption, a British NGO that focuses on financial corruption.

“Whether or not diplomats were aware of the NCA investigations, it is highly problematic if they are courting corrupt officials to win contracts,” she said in an emailed response. “Arguably given there had been a World Bank debarment and there may have been awareness of an undisclosed NCA investigation in the country, the Ministry of Defense should have done additional and very rigorous due diligence on any suppliers, middlemen, etc.”

Legal fallout

The legal battles over the case were protracted and spanned multiple jurisdictions, as prosecutors moved to build their case while both companies enlisted top-tier lawyers to protect their interests.

Oberthur received notice of an impending World Bank audit in August 2015 – five months after the first illicit payment, according to an annual report obtained by Netra News. Yet, the company officials met Tarique Siddique a month later, and kept releasing questionable transfers for months.

By 2016, the partnership between Oberthur and Tiger IT — forged through collaboration on a similar government project five years earlier — had begun to crumble. Tipped off by the World Bank, UK authorities launched an investigation and, by year’s end, had sought documents from Rahman.

Unnerved, Tiger IT moved swiftly to safeguard its interests on home turf in Dhaka, where it wielded near-unrivalled political clout. In early 2017, the company filed a $4.5 million lawsuit against its business partner in a local court, alleging breach of contract.

In hindsight, that decision proved immensely beneficial for the company.

Within months, the NCA escalated the matter to the French authorities, who promptly opened a criminal investigation into Oberthur. It remains unclear whether the UK relayed similar concerns to Bangladesh. The country’s Anti-Corruption Commission did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Meanwhile, facing mounting legal pressure from French and British law enforcement, and effectively sidelined by Tiger IT in Dhaka, Oberthur agreed to co-operate with World Bank investigators later in 2017.

In 2018, Tiger IT secured an injunction from a Dhaka court blocking a €15 million payment that the Election Commission had agreed to make to Oberthur following the early termination of the contract. The injunction enabled the Bangladeshi company to avoid litigation in less favourable foreign jurisdictions, where it lacked allies such as Tarique Siddique.

Oberthur first sought to challenge the court order in Geneva, as stipulated by the contract. However, Swiss courts are unable to halt legal proceedings in other countries, prompting the company to turn instead to a court in London. In 2019, a British judge dismissed the case, ruling that the court lacked jurisdiction.

Tiger IT, meanwhile, pursued the dispute all the way to Bangladesh’s Supreme Court, case records show. The move effectively tied Oberthur’s hands, allowing the Bangladeshi company to settle the matter on favourable terms out of court.

A spokesperson for Tiger IT confirmed that the parties had since reached a private settlement but declined to disclose the terms. IDEMIA, Oberthur’s successor, also considers the matter “closed.”

Later in 2019, the World Bank’s sanctions board issued its long-awaited ruling, laying out the bribery scheme in forensic detail. Tiger IT was debarred for more than nine years, Oberthur for three, and Rahman – along with several of his foreign-registered firms – was also sanctioned. Tiger IT challenged the decision in Bangladeshi courts, an effort legal scholars deemed futile given the Bank’s international immunity.

The World Bank would not say whether it had ever raised the case with Bangladeshi authorities, nor would it comment on whether it intends to do so in light of the political transition following Hasina’s fall.●

(Nazmul Ahasan, formerly Deputy Editor at Netra News, David Bergman, formerly English Editor at Netra News, and Marzia Hashmi contributed to the reporting. Aaqib Md. Shatil and Suraiya Sultana contributed to the research. Illustration by Subinoy Mustofi Eron.)