ACC to sue eleven for ‘pocketing Tk 174cr’
MM Vegetable Oil Products Ltd, a subsidiary of Mostafa Group of Industries, has allegedly misappropriated around Tk 174 crore from Bangladesh Development Bank Ltd using fake documents.
The Anti-Corruption Commission made the allegations after an enquiry that found 11 people, including former officials of Bangladesh Development Bank Ltd (BDBL), involved in the graft that took place in 2012.
After completing the enquiry, ACC’s Deputy Director Gulshan Anowar Prodhan submitted the findings to the three-member Commission, which then gave the green signal to lodge a case against them, sources said.
MM Vegetable Oil Products set up a plant for soybean and palm oil at Bhatiari of Chattogram, they added.
The company showed that they imported raw materials for the plant from Globe International and Lucida Trading on June 21, 2012 through two separate letters of credit (LCs) worth around Tk 79.55 crore.
They submitted the LCs to Bangladesh Development Bank’s principal branch in Dhaka for the money as a loan.
“The Globe International and Lucida Trading are two paper-based organisations and have no existence,” an ACC official said.
He added, “Without verifying whether any raw materials have been supplied, the bank officials okayed the loan.”
Mostafa Group later transferred the money to their accounts in Trust Bank and Dhaka Bank and misappropriated Tk 79.55 crore.
The loan, including interest, now accrued to Tk 179 crore.
In the enquiry, the ACC found that those who misappropriated the money were: Chairman of MM Vegetable Oil Products Hefazatur Rahman, its Managing Director Jahir Uddin and Directors Kamal Uddin, Kafil Uddin, Rafiq Uddin, Shafiq Uddin and Jasim Uddin, proprietor of Lucida Trading Mohammad Nasir Uddin Chowdhury, proprietor of Globe International Mahbubul Alam Chowhdury, BDBL’s former senior principal officer Dinesh Chandra Saha and retired general manager Syed Nurur Rahman Kadri.
Contacted, Hefazatur told, “The LCs were not fake. We have not done anything of this sort.”
In 2014, more than a dozen banks met with the debt-ridden Mostafa Group, which was burdened with default loans of around Tk 1,400 crore at that time, to find a way that would benefit both the lenders and the Chittagong-based conglomerate.
The late Mostafizur Rahman of Chittagong founded the Mostafa Group in 1952.
Initially, it was engaged in commercial trading, export and import. It later started manufacturing steel products, iron and MS rods, and got involved in shipbreaking, artificial leather making, and shrimp cultivation, processing and export.
The group also has businesses in textile and readymade garments, paper, refined palm and soybean oil, coconut oil, iodised salt, tea, rubber plantation, transport, IT and the financial sectors.
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