Track the bribe: Young duo launches 'GhushSite' to map public corruption via anonymous reports

"Name the department. Name the demand. Keep the person private."

That is the tagline of GhushSite, a new website created by two young Bangladeshi entrepreneurs to crowdsource anonymous reports of alleged bribe demands in public services nationwide.

The website, www.ghush.site, which went live yesterday (21 August), allows users to report the department, service, approximate location, amount demanded, and outcome without providing an account, name, email or phone number.

Its creators say the aim is not to establish individual wrongdoing but to build a public record that could reveal patterns in unofficial payments.

"Everyone in Bangladesh already knows ghush [bribe] exists. What nobody has is the number," Saif Kabeer, one of the creators, told The Business Standard.

"You find out what a passport file or a driving licence or a mutation 'costs' only when you are standing at the counter, alone, usually in a hurry, with no idea whether the amount being asked of you is the going rate or double it. We built a public ledger to close that gap.

"If enough people write down what they were asked for, the next person walks in already knowing," he said.

Saif said the idea was inspired by an Indian website, bribes.fyi, which he came across before sending it to his friend and co-creator Shahed Sharif. They developed the Bangladesh version within a day, he said.

According to the latest data on ghush.site, 458 reports involving Tk2.45 crore in alleged bribes across all eight divisions have been filed.

Dhaka has the highest number with 254 reports, followed by Chattogram with 98, Sylhet with 24, Rajshahi and Khulna with 22 each, Mymensingh with 16, Rangpur with 15, and Barishal with seven.

The figures are based entirely on self-reported and unverified accounts submitted through the website.

Saif cautioned against interpreting the total or average amount as representative of what an ordinary service user is typically asked to pay. 

The average reported demand is Tk33,747, but it is skewed by a small number of large cases involving areas such as land, customs, and tax, where alleged demands run into lakhs.

"Every figure on the site is self-reported and unverified, including those," he said.

Screengrab of GhushSite

How does GhushSite work?

The website's process is divided into three stages.

Users first provide details about the department, service, approximate location, amount, and outcome, while being instructed not to name individual officials.

The submission then passes through an automated moderation system before publication.

Saif said a language model checks entries for names, phone numbers, NID and file numbers, and other identifying information, as well as obvious abuse and spam.

"What gets published is department, service, approximate location, amount, outcome, and the person's own description with identifying details removed," he said.

The system does not verify whether an alleged incident actually happened.

"It is a privacy filter, not a truth check," Saif said. "It does not establish whether any incident happened, and we do not present anything on the site as verified."

He said the site does not have people reviewing every submission, with the automated system allowing the two creators to handle the volume of reports.

Entries containing personal information that escape the filter can be reported and removed, he said.

"The rule we enforce hardest is that no individual gets named. This is about offices and processes, not about hunting people," Saif said.

The website similarly states that its reports are "allegations, not findings of guilt" and describes itself as an "awareness ledger", rather than an official complaint authority.

What could the reports show?

Saif told TBS that the value of the platform lies less in proving individual allegations than in identifying recurring patterns.

"One person saying a licence took Tk10,000 is an anecdote. Forty people reporting the same office within the same range is a pattern, and a pattern is much harder to wave away than a complaint," he said.

He identified three potential uses for the data: helping people understand what they might encounter before visiting an office, providing bottom-up information for journalists, researchers, and policymakers, and encouraging people to document experiences that would otherwise remain unreported.

"Most people pay and never tell anyone. Writing it down publicly, even anonymously, breaks that," he said.

The platform's reports are searchable by division, department, amount, and outcome.

One report alleges that Tk15,000 was paid for a driving licence at the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA), with the reporter writing, "Made me fail every time until I went the unofficial route."

Another alleges that Tk10,000 was paid for birth certificate registration, with the reporter claiming that people inside a Dhaka North City Corporation office in Mohakhali initially said the service was not possible before allegedly seeking a bribe.

Saif stressed that such reports should not be treated as verified evidence. "I would only ask that the story reflects that the reports are unverified, since that framing protects the people submitting them as much as it protects us."

The website is funded by its creators and partly through voluntary donations, which users can make to support its operation. Submitting a report does not require a donation or any form of payment.

GhushSite creators have also made it clear that it is not intended to replace formal complaints to government authorities.

They hope that as the number of submissions grows, the ledger will provide a clearer picture of alleged unofficial payment demands across public services.