A former data center director has been sent to jail in Bangladesh for selling the National Identification information of citizens.
Tareque M Barkatullah formerly worked as an executive at a government data center in Dhaka, as reported by The Business Standard.
Talebur Rahman, deputy commissioner of the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, confirmed Barkatullah was arrested on October 9 and will now be facing prison time.
It is unclear how long Barkatullah will be incarcerated for.
Rahman said: “Over 110 million Bangladeshi citizens’ personal information stored in the Election Commission’s data center was stolen. Initial reports suggest transactions worth TK20,000 crore over this incident.”
A case has also been filed in relation to the incident, naming 19 other individuals. It is estimated another 15 to 20 suspects were involved in the theft.
A company named Digicon Global Services is involved in the sale of the personal information.
Sajeeb Wazed Joy, son of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, and the former state minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak were also reportedly involved in the crime.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak was one of the ministers responsible for the government-ordered Internet outage in Bangladesh earlier this year. Palak misled the nation into believing fires caused the outage.