From Audi to Goat: When showing off properties come with consequences in Bangladesh
How Bangladeshi social media users find hidden assets and bank loans now
It all started with an Audi.
Rafsan, a popular food vlogger in Bangladesh surprised his parents with a brand new Audi. A car many claim is priced at Tk2 crore.
The video he made about the gift was a tearjerker. It's every son's dream to gift their parents something outstanding with their own hard-earned money.
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But it didn't stay emotional for long as Facebook started flooding with information about Rafsan's parent's Tk2.5 crore unpaid loans from a bank.
It could have never stopped there, and it did not. Social media remained abuzz with the topic for days if not weeks.
After weeks of silence, Rafsan published a video on 15 May explaining how the land that was on mortgage while getting the bank loan is worth much more now and how the whole issue is currently in court.
"Me and my brother are fully capable of paying back the bank loans. But how are we supposed to pay it without knowing the amount?" he asked during the video.
He also claimed the price of the car is nowhere around Tk2 crore.
The Audi came with consequences, though.
On 24 April, the Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) imposed a Tk30,000 fine during a raid at the DrinkBlu Beverage factory in Cumilla for not having a product packaging certificate and manufacturing the drink in unsanitary conditions.
Rafsan launched Blu product line back in December last year.
You may ask, but he published the video of gifting his parents the car on 5 May.
What happened is, that even though the BSTI raid took place on 24 April, no one knew about it until 17 May, two days after Rafsan published the explanation video on the outstanding loans of his parents.
The topic kept social media abuzz for several more weeks. But then it started dimming down until yesterday when Rafsan secured anticipatory bail in a case filed over alleged marketing of Blu, his uncertified electrolyte drink.
But even then, the short attention span of netizens couldn't keep up with everything else going on around them. They had a bigger incident to worry about.
Enters the GOAT of goats. But before that, let's go back three years.
Sadeeq Agro, currently being demolished by Dhaka north after getting enough attention from the goat incident, is not new to creating controversies with their expensive cattle.
Back on 5 July 2021, dairy farm Sadeeq, a concern of Sadeeq Agro Limited, attempted to import 18 cows of Brahman breed without prior permission from the authorities concerned and without opening a letter of credit (LC).
They were seized by the customs officials at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport.
This was taken to the High Court, who on 3 August the same year upheld the customs officials' decision to seize the cows.
Back to the Tk15-lakh goat
Days before Eid-ul-Adha, Mushfiqur Rahman Ifat, son of Matiur Rahman, an NBR official (now former), bragged about buying a Tk15 lakh goat from Sadeeq Agro on the worst place he could, the Bangladeshi social media.
It was BBC who first wrote an in-depth report on the incident.
Soon after it started getting widespread reaction from netizens, Matiur almost broke the internet by claiming Ifat is neither his son nor an acquaintance.
This sudden claim begged more questions, did the NBR official just disown his son over a goat?
Even after such a claim, social media users in our country were reluctant to give up. Turned out Matiur got married twice and Ifat is indeed his son with his second wife.
Surprise, surprise! It also turned out that Ifat didn't even buy the goat. He paid an advance of Tk1 lakh and then was nowhere to be found. Even today, as the Sadeeq Agro is being demolished, the Tk15 lakh goat is being kept in an open space nearby.
It clearly lost its home among all the controversies.
Ifat's interest in such an expensive goat did beg more questions. How does a revenue officer's son even dare to make an attempt to buy such an expensive animal for sacrifice?
And all hell broke loose while attempting to find the answer.
Turned out Matiur made a fortune over the years. A fortune so massive that even his first wife, Laila Kanis Lucky, a college teacher with a payroll of one, became a millionaire almost overnight.
She made a fortune so big that she owns an entire park and a mansion (calling it a home would be an understatement) in Narsingdi's Raipur upazila, where she suddenly became a chairman without any prior connection to politics.
And these are only the assets we could have found in such a short time.
Matiur and his family were slapped with a travel ban on 24 June. Meanwhile, many media have claimed that he fled the country to India via Akhaura land port with the help of "a very powerful syndicate" on 23 June afternoon.
Some even claimed he "shaved his head" before escaping. Many claimed he didn't have to do such a thing as he wore a wig. But the mystery behind exactly what happened remains unknown.
There are no traces of his wives or sons either.
Matiur's "disappearance" mimics that of former inspector general of police Benazir Ahmed.
After a hoard of his illegal wealth came under scrutiny, Benazir vanished.
He was summoned to the ACC twice but failed to appear on each occasion.
Do you remember the popular 90s commercial "eka eka khete chao? doroja bondho kore khao" (if you want to eat alone, close the door first.)
If all these chains of events were to be turned into a TV series like Game of Thrones, this would have been the most significant yet subtle foreshadowing of a major future development.
Like the one in early episodes of GoT where Jon Snow got his white dire wolf (later named Ghost) in the wild unlike the other Stark children who got the grey ones.
While many believed it portrayed Jon being an outsider among his family, we all knew what it meant in the final season.
