ACC to keep under its control 1,028 acres of land, 50 flats of the group and its high-ups until disposal of 2 money laundering cases
The Anti-Corruption Commission has confiscated Tk 550 crore properties of the controversial Destiny Group in connection with two money laundering cases.
The properties include over 1,028 acres of land and about 50 flats owned by the company and its top brass, and their value has been assessed on the basis of the purchase deeds.
Rafiqul Amin, chairman and managing director of the group, owns 22 of the 50 flats. His wife Farah Diba owns one flat while the group’s subsidiaries own the rest, ACC officials said.
More than 50 percent of the seized land is in Dhaka and the remaining in 19 other districts, including Khulna, Barisal, Rangpur and Chittagong.
These properties have not been acquired, said an ACC official, adding, “We’ll just preserve the assets as per the court order until disposal of the cases.
“We’ll communicate the matter to the administration of the 19 districts by next week [this week] so they can prevent those properties from being sold, transferred or grabbed,” the ACC official told The Daily Star on Wednesday, requesting anonymity.
The court order came on November 27 in connection with two cases against 22 officials of the company on charges of laundering Tk 3,285 crore.
ACC lawyer Mosharraf Hossain Kajol said, “The confiscation took effect immediately after the court order.”
The anti-graft body filed the cases in July. Subsequently, Rafiqul Amin, group president Lt Gen (retd) Harun-Ar-Rashid and Destiny 2000 Chairman Mohammad Hossain were arrested. Harun, a former army chief, secured bail from the High Court, but Rafiqul and Hossain are still behind bars.
Earlier on October 2, a Dhaka court ordered freezing 533 bank accounts of Destiny officials in response to a petition by the ACC.
Destiny has 37 companies, majority of which are on paper.
However, the November 27 order would not affect operations of the lawful concerns of the group. The order is applicable in respect to the properties of Destiny Group, Destiny Tree Plantation, group Chairman and MD Rafiqul, his wife and Destiny Cooperative and Destiny 2000 Chairman Mohammad Hossain.
“We won’t interfere in the operations of Destiny’s legal entities,” ACC Chairman Ghulam Rahman told this correspondent.
The group began its journey with Destiny 2000, a multilevel marketing company, in which Rafiqul and 11 others invested Tk 12 lakh in 2000.
It expanded rapidly after it introduced in 2005 its cooperative wing, Destiny Multipurpose Cooperative Society, which worked like a cash cow.
The Cooperative’s paid-up capital increased to nearly Tk 300 crore in 2009-10 from Tk 5.53 crore a year ago. The figure jumped to nearly Tk 1,200 crore in 2010-11.
Destiny Tree Plantation project also generated a lot of cash for Rafiqul and other top officials.
Mohammad Hossain earlier confessed to a Dhaka court that Rafiqul and some other officials had embezzled Tk 1,100 crore from the tree plantation project.
Source: The Daily Star
