DHAKA, 1 October 2007 — The Bangladesh High Court yesterday ordered former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia to be freed on bail and halted further prosecution of her on corruption charges. A division bench comprising Justice Shah Abu Nayeem Mominur Rahman and Justice Zubayer Rahman Chowdhury issued the order on two petitions. Khaleda and her son Arafat Rahman had challenged the legality of filing new cases against them under the Emergency Power Rules.
It was not clear whether Khaleda would be freed immediately. The prosecutor’s office said it would appeal against the ruling and try to block her release from detention.
Security forces arrested Khaleda and her son Arafat early this month for awarding a cargo-handling contract to a firm in 2003 that her son favored, overruling a state committee’s recommendation.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) lodged the charges against Khaleda, her son and 11 other people a day before she was detained on Sept. 3.
Since then, she has been held at a house in the Parliament compound.
“The court has granted bail to the former prime minister and halted the proceeding of the case under emergency power rules,” Khaleda’s lawyer Rafiqul Huq told reporters.
Huq said: “The court has accepted our point that an offense committed before imposition of state of emergency cannot be tried under emergency power rules.” The court urged the interim government and the ACC to explain within six weeks why bringing the case under emergency power rules should not be declared unlawful. More than 170 political leaders, including the two former prime ministers, have been detained on charges of corruption, extortion and misuse of power.
Khaleda’s other son Tareque Rahman has been detained since March on extortion charges.
The High Court did not grant bail to Khaleda’s son, Arafat, a co-accused in the same case. The interim government accuses him of persuading his mother to give a contract to Dhaka-based Global Agro Trade (Private) Company at the port of Chittagong and a container depot in Dhaka. The son of a former shipping minister, detained last week, said in a statement that he had accepted 20 million taka ($290,000) from the firm and handed half to Arafat Rahman.
Businessman Sentenced to Five Years
One of Bangladesh’s richest men, his wife and three sons were sentenced in absentia yesterday to five years each in jail as part of a government anti-corruption drive, officials said.
Property tycoon Ahmed Akbar Sobhan and his close family were convicted by a special anti-graft court of evading taxes worth 8.22 million taka ($1.2 million), state prosecutor Shamim Ahsan said. Sobhan is the chairman of the Bashundhara Group, which owns a shopping mall in Dhaka reputed to be the biggest in South Asia. The company also owns two residential towns and cement, paper and steel mills.
They were also sentenced to three years each in jail, to be served concurrently, for providing false wealth statements to the authorities, he said.
“The judge also ordered confiscation of property worth 220 million taka of Bashundhara Industrial Complex, which the Sobhan family owns. They are also fined 8.3 million taka,” he said.
An accountant whose firm advised Sobhan on tax matters was also sentenced to three years in jail, he added.
Sobhan and his family have been out of the country since authorities listed him as one of the country’s top 50 corrupt people. The state prosecutor said Sobhan was the first tycoon to be sentenced as part of the corruption crackdown. Meanwhile, authorities in Bangladesh have succeeded partially in recovering untaxed funds at home, but lacking adequate evidence they are growing increasingly skeptical about those laundered and stashed abroad.
The extended date asking people to declare unaccounted income ended yesterday. Officials said they had unearthed taka 32 billion ($535 million) of such income, generating taka 5.4 billion in tax.
Seventy percent of the 22,500 defaulters were from Greater Dhaka, the national capital and its surrounding areas, the New Age newspaper said yesterday.
“The response should have been much more,” said Badiur Rahman, chairman of National Board of Revenue. Finance Adviser Mirza Azizul Islam said Saturday that he saw “bleak prospect” of repatriation of money siphoned out of the country.
