AL lawmaker Abdus Sobhan Miah denies owning property in US
Awami League lawmaker Mohammed Abdus Sobhan Miah, alias Golap, has said media reports claiming his ownership of real estate properties worth $4 million in the United States are "rumours".
"A rumour is going around that I own houses in New York, although I don't know anything about this yet. So, I don't want to comment on the issue before I find out the details," he told The Business Standard on Saturday.
On Friday, a report published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) said the AL lawmaker owns properties worth $4 million in New York real estate.
Keep updated, follow The Business Standard's Google news channel
Golap served as a personal aide to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina since the premier returned to power in 2009. He was elected as an MP from Madaripur-3 constituency in 2018.
Between 2014 and 2019, Abdus Sobhan's real estate portfolio came to include nine properties, worth over $4 million in total in places such as New York's Jackson Heights district, reports OCCRP, a global network of investigative journalists.
The report, published on Friday, says Golap moved to the US in the 1980s and worked a series of low-paying jobs — making pizzas, serving as a drugstore clerk, and driving an unlicensed taxi.
His New York purchases started in 2014. His declarations and tax records show no evidence of any US income at that point, and it is unclear how he could have accumulated millions of dollars to buy the properties from his local jobs, reads the report.
