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Dhaka – Bangladesh’s anti-graft watchdog has approved charges of money laundering and embezzlement of funds against the country’s former chief justice and 10 others.
Former chief justice Surendra Kumar Sinha and 10 others were found involved as an inquiry launched into the alleged embezzlement and laundering, Anti-Corruption Commission Director General Sayeed Mahbub Khan told reporters in Dhaka on Wednesday.
The commission also decided to file a case against former minister Nazmul Huda for filing a false case against Sinha, who is now in exile.
According to the ACC, justice Sinha and 10 others have been accused of embezzling 40 million taka from the Farmers Bank – which has been renamed as Padma Bank Ltd.
Former Farmers Bank’s managing director AKM Shameem, first vice-presidents Swapan Kumar Roy and Shafiuddin Askaree, senior executive vice-presidents Gazi Salauddin and Ziauddin Ahmed, and vice-president M Lutful Haque and four clients of the ban Md Shahjahan, Niranjan Chandra Saha, his uncle Ranajit Chandra Saha, and Ranajit’s wife Santree Roy were named as accused in the case.
The anti-graft agency found both Niranjan Chandra Saha and M Shahjahan deposited 20 million taka each into Sinha’s personal account in Sonali Bank, transferred from their accounts with the Farmers Bank’s Gulshan Branch, by separate pay orders in 2016.
On July 10 this year, ACC Director Syed Iqbal Hossain filed the case with the anti-graft watchdog’s Integrated District Office-1.
Niranjan Chandra and Shahjahan collected the money through a loan from the same bank, which was processed illegally, and without following due process with the help of the bank officials, the ACC says.
Ranajit, known as a personal staff to Sinha, accomplished the mission along with his childhood friend Shahjahan.
The ACC began the investigation into the allegation came from an unknown complaint in April 2018. The complaint said 40 million taka was deposited from two accounts of the Farmers Bank to the bank account of the chief justice.
As the ACC found proof of the unlawful transaction, it says that accused committed that offence under the Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2012.
Justice Sinha left the country for Australia in October 2017 as her resigned from the position of chief justice as his colleagues did not wanted to sit with him in the same bench after the corruption allegation surfaced.
He had developed a bitter relation with the ruling Awami League party centering his observation on a verdict in a case related to constitutional amendment law.
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