The Anti-Corruption Commission on Saturday arrested Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited chief executive officer Mehboob Chowdhury in a case filed against him and 15 others.
Commission’s deputy director Sheikh Abdus Salam arrested Mehboob at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka when he tried to leave the country, said its public relations officer Pranab Kumar Bhattacharjee.
Mehboob was arrested three days after the commission filed the case with Banani police station against the 16, including Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Limited, well known as Citycell, chairman M Morshed Khan, also Bangladesh Nationalist Party vice-chairman and former foreign minister, on charge of embezzlement of Tk 383.22 crore.
The other accused are Citycell vice-chairman Asgar Karim, its director Nasreen Khan, also wife of Morshed Khan, former AB Bank managing directors Kaiser Ahmed Chowdhury, M Fazlur Rahman and Shamim Ahmed, its former deputy managing director Mosiur Rahman Chowdhury, executive vice-presidents Salma Akter and Mohadeb Sarkar, senior vice-president and relationship managers Syed Farhad Alam, Arshad Mahmud Khan and M Jahangir Alam, senior assistant vice-president Shahanur Parvin Chowdhury, assistant vice-president Jar-e-Khan Elahee and relationship officer M Kamaruzzaman.
Pranab said that the commission was also trying to arrest the rest 15 accused in the case and the commission official would produce Mehboob before Dhaka Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court today.
According to the first information report, the alleged money embezzlement occurred between March 2011 and October 2015.
It said that a Citycell application for a loan guarantee of Tk 348.50 crore was forwarded to the AB Bank head office from its Mohakhali branch without scrutiny in breach of the banking rules.
Later, the AB Bank managing directors approved unchangeable and unconditional bank guarantee without scrutinising the recommendations made by the branch and the credit committee, the complaint said.
Citycell managed to get Tk 348.50 crore from six banks and two financial institutions using the bank guarantee and AB Bank later paid off the loans with Tk 34.72 crore in interests, it added.
Issuing such an ‘ill-motivated’ loan guarantee without mortgage, AB Bank officials committed an offence under the Corruption Prevention Act 1947, the complaint said.
Source: New Age
