Desh TV MD Arif Hasan nabbed

 
The Detective Branch (DB) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police arrested private satellite channel Desh TV's Managing Director Arif Hasan from Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on Saturday night.

For the past several years Desh TV's Managing Director, Arif Hasan, has been accused of blackmailing major industrial groups and businessmen by broadcasting false reports. The channel, which received approval during the autocratic Awami League government, has been under scrutiny, and a prominent industrial group recently filed a defamation suit against Arif Hasan.

Several top industrialists, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Asian Age that Arif Hasan directly demanded specific sums of money through WhatsApp, threatening them with negative news coverage. Allegations show that Arif Hasan siphoned off enormous amounts of money from different private banks during last several years in unlawful ways and reportedly he is also a business partner with arrested Law Minister Anisul Huq.

Arif Hasan was a beneficiary of the financial sector corruption and rampage under ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and he had very close affiliations with Salman F. Rahman alias Darbesh Baba. Both Salman F Rahman and Anisul Huq were arrested a few days after Sheikh Hasina escaped to India on 5 August 2024 in the middle of an unprecedented countrywide mass upsurge. Both Anisul Huq and Salman F Rahman are now facing prosecution.

Arif Hasan was one of the masterminds of the immoral exercise of politicizing and polluting private television channels with nepotism, shady deals, power abuse and some other forms of malpractices.