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Published : 28 Aug 2013, 02:02 AM
Attorney General Mahbubey Alam made the revelation at a workshop organised by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in Dhaka on Tuesday.
He handed a token cheque of $ 956,387.4 to ACC Chairman Md Badiuzzaman.
A foreign bank issued the token cheque against the ACC’s Stolen Asset Recovery account.
“We received the money two days ago,” the Attorney General said.
Coco, convicted in a money laundering case, has been living abroad for the last five years. He was sentenced in absentia. The BNP maintains case was ‘politically motivated’.
On Nov 22 last year, the national anti-graft agency said it had brought back 20,41,000 Singapore dollars of the money laundered by Coco.
Coco was sentenced to six years in prison and fined Tk 388.3 million for laundering the money to Singapore between 2004 and 2006, during the tenure of the 2001-6 BNP-led government.
Mahbubey Alam said Bangladesh had singed the UN’s anti-corruption convention.
“We sought information under the Convention and learnt that Siemens had bribed Coco.
“He opened a bank account in Singapore by submitting his passport and set up two companies there,” Alam said.
“A case was filed with a Bangladeshi court based on that information. We requested Singapore to return the money after the court verdict.
“We, finally, got back the money after our application was granted [by Singapore authorities],” the Attorney General said.
