The English daily The Daily Star retracted a report containing incorrect information about SS Power, apologizing for professional error.
In a report titled 'SS power rejoinder: The Daily Star retracts story' on Saturday, the daily also said it would do its best to prevent a repeat of such a mistake. Earlier on September 26, 2024, The Daily Star published under the title 'S Alam nexus laundered 815 million dollar through two LCs'.
In this regard, Daily Star said, 'After reviewing the information used in our report on SS Power for the past few days, it seems that there is a need to better verify the authenticity of this information. Officially confirmed by Rupali Bank, Rupali Bank officials have uploaded fake invoice numbers and dates related to these LCs at least 46 times in their report to Bangladesh Bank. We are still reviewing Rupali Bank's admission regarding wrong data entry in the Central Bank's server, Rupali Bank and SS Power's protest and the original report published in our newspaper. As per the ethics of journalism, we are promptly removing the report from all our electronic platforms until the matter is fully resolved.”
SS Power Limited and Rupali Bank protested the report published on September 26.
The Daily Star reported, 'We have reviewed the official information used in our report over the past few days. We needed to further verify some official information of Bangladesh Bank, NBR and Rupali Bank.
We sat down with Rupali Bank officials last Thursday (October 3) who uploaded the LC-related data used in our report to Bangladesh Bank's servers.
Basically based on their and other official information we published the report. In response to our queries at this meeting, Rupali Bank confirmed in writing that its officials had 'inadvertently uploaded 41 wrong invoice dates and 5 wrong invoice numbers'. We are reporting as we are misled by such huge misinformation about SS Power's money laundering claims. But we realize now, we were wrong.
We sincerely apologize for this professional error. Sometimes this happens when the official information is wrong. Even with good intentions or following the highest standards of ethical journalism, sometimes we make mistakes. We take responsibility for our mistakes and correct them. Also we sincerely apologize to SS Power Limited and our readers.
We removed the report from all our electronic platforms within half an hour of Rupali Bank confirming the wrong data entry on October 3, around 8 pm and published a notice on our website informing the readers about the removal. We have now withdrawn the report from our print edition.
We would like to point out, the article was published in good faith. No harm intended. In our 33 years of journalism, we have never made such a deliberate mistake. The information we used was not our own. They were the official data of Bangladesh Bank, NBR and Rupali Bank servers. In this case we are victims of misinformation.
We would like to assure our readers that we will do our best to prevent the recurrence of such mistakes.
Before this, on September 30, a report titled 'Conspiracy on SS Power, fear of loss of foreign investment' was published in daily newspaper. According to this report, SS Power One Limited (SSPONEL) is the only large joint (China-Bangladesh) investment company in the private sector in the country. This power project with a power generation capacity of 1,224 megawatts has been supplying about 1,100 megawatts of electricity to the national grid since October 26, 2023. The management has alleged that there is a planned conspiracy against the power plant.
It is said in the complaint that as part of the conspiracy, an attempt is being made to tarnish the power generation plant by spreading baseless and false information in various media including print copy of a national English daily newspaper, online and digital media.