JKG Chairman Dr Sabrina arrested over Covid-19 testing scam

Police on Sunday arrested JKG Health Care Chairman Dr Sabrina Arif Chowdhury in a case filed over her alleged involvement in a recent Covid-19 testing scam.

She also works as a registrar doctor at the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases. The institute suspended her when the news of her arrest broke out. 

Police called Dr Sabrina – wife of JKG Health Care Chief Executive Officer Ariful Chowdhury – for interrogation on that day.

Dhaka Metropolitan Police's (DMP) Tejgaon Division Deputy Commissioner Harun-Ur-Rashid told The Business Standard on Sunday, "We called and interrogated Dr Sabrina for her alleged involvement in the Covid-19 testing scam."

"During the interrogation, she tried to deny all the allegations and could not give satisfactory answers to the queries. So she has been shown arrested."

Police will produce Dr Sabrina before the Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court on July 13. 

"We will seek a four-day remand for her for further interrogation," Harun-Ur-Rashid said.

However, Jobeda Khatun General (JKG) Health Care is a sister concern of Oval Group.

The organisation made headlines when DMP's Tejgaon Division arrested five people including Ariful for their alleged involvement in providing Covid-19 testing results – without carrying out tests – during a raid at Oval's Gulshan office.

At the beginning of the outbreak, JKG Health Care signed an agreement with the Directorate of Health Services to set up booths and collect Covid-19 samples. 

Later the organisation collected samples from homes for Tk5,000 to TK6,600 and gave false reports without testing the samples.

Dr Sabrina repeatedly claimed that she had no connection with the organisation since the news of the scam broke out.

However, while interrogating her, police learned that Dr Sabrina was the chair of GKG Health Care and Oval Group.

The police investigation found that while collecting samples from different parts of the country including Dhaka, the organisation provided fake Covid-19 reports to 15,480 people without carrying out any tests. 

All the fake test reports were made on a laptop on the 15th floor of Oval's Gulshan office.

"They faked the test reports and sent them to thousands of people by email. After examining the laptop seized from their office, we found such shocking details," said Harun-Ur-Rashid. 

They charged a minimum of Tk5,000 per person for the test and $100 for foreign nationals. JKG swindled Tk7 crore and 70 lakh this way.

The DMP investigation also revealed that JKG issued 27,000 Covid-19 certificates. 

Of these, 11,540 samples were properly tested through the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research and the remaining 15,460 reports were prepared on a laptop. 

Seven to eight employees of JKG would work on the laptop day and night to make fake reports.