Supreme Court clears way for graft cases against BNP's Moudud, Mosharraf

The Supreme Court has cleared the way for the corruption trials of BNP leaders Moudud Ahmed and Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain.

The two had petitioned the court to review an appeal verdict from 2014, which ordered the continuation of their trials on charges of illegal earnings and hiding income.

But the three-member appeals bench led by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha dismissed their pleas on Monday.

There are no more obstacles for trying the cases with the Special Judges Court, said Khurshid Alam Khan, the lawyer representing the Anti-Corruption Commission or ACC.

ACC Deputy Director Shariful Hoque Siddiqui started the case against Moudud, a standing committee member of the BNP, during the state of emergency in 2007.

Moudud is accused of amassing wealth worth over Tk 73.8 million through illegal means and for concealing information about wealth worth over Tk 44 million in his statement.

In February 2014, the ACC filed a case against Khandaker Mosharraf, accusing him of laundering money during his time as health minister, between 2001 and 2006.

The charges said that he had parked £804,142 in a joint account with his wife at the Lloyd’s Bank in the UK.

The BNP leader claimed that the money in question was neither illegally earned nor laundered out of the country.

He was arrested from his Dhaka home in March 2014 but was released on bail in January 2016.