Court orders 10 years’ jail for seven high-ups of Oriental Bank for loan fraud

A Dhaka court has sentenced seven high officials of the now defunct Oriental Bank to 10 years’ rigorous imprisonment for being involved in a financial scam.

Court Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 13 April 2015, 07:29 AM
Updated : 13 April 2015, 09:05 AM

The court of Dhaka’s Second Special Judge Hosne Ara Begum also fined the officials by Tk 19 million.

Those sentenced are the then Oriental Senior Vice President Shah Mohammad Harun, Senior Assistant Vice President Abul Kashem Mahmudullah, Vice Presidents Fazlur Rahman, Mohammad Tarikul Alam and Mahmud Hossain, Executive Vice President Quamrul Islam and Deputy General Manager Emamul Haque.

The seven convicted are absconding.

All of them, except Tarikul Islam, had been earlier found guilty by Dhaka’s Fourth Special Judge’s Court in another case concerning a loan fraud and sentenced a seven-year prison term each.

In December, 2006, the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) filed a case, accusing the officials of collusion in the embezzlement of Tk 9.5 million from the bank.

A loan application was filed in 2005 with the bank by a phantom business organisation ‘M/S Tanbir Agency’, which was later approved.

According to ACC, Tk 340 million was embezzled from the Oriental bank during the 2005-06 fiscal.

The ACC has filed 34 cases over the scams and the investigators submitted chargesheets of eight cases in 2013.

In 2006, Bangladesh Bank took over Oriental Bank and appointed an administrator after the scam came to light.

The bank was rechristened as ICB Islamic Bank in 2009.