Rejoinder, our reply

NRB Commercial Bank has sent a rejoinder to a report run by The Daily Star on September 12 under the headline “Inspect NRB Commercial Bank, court asks BB”.

“The newspaper report stated that the High Court has ordered to inspect corruption allegations against the chairman, vice chairman and managing director of the bank. We got the certified copy of the verdict after the Eid-ul-Azha vacation and saw that the news published has no similarity with the court order,” the rejoinder reads. “The High Court did not order to inspect corruption allegations against the chairman, vice chairman and managing director of the bank, rather it has issued a rule to all respondents (in the writ petition) why Bangladesh Bank will not be asked to inspect the allegations,” according to the rejoinder.

The rejoinder also said, as an interim instruction, the High Court has directed Bangladesh Bank to dispose of the petitioner's application dated May 26, 2016 within two months upon receipt of the order.

Our reply:

The Daily Star did not mention anywhere in the report that the High Court has ordered to inspect corruption allegations against the chairman, vice chairman and managing director of NRB Commercial Bank.

“The High Court asked Bangladesh Bank to carry out an inspection of NRB Commercial Bank after allegations of irregularities were brought by a director of the bank,” stated The Daily Star report, quoting barrister M Ashraful Islam, a lawyer for petitioner AM Tushar Iqbal Rahman, a director of the bank.

On May 26 this year, AM Saidur Rahman, the nominated director of AM Tushar Iqbal Rahman on the board of NRB Commercial Bank, lodged complaints with the central bank against the irregularities.

Taking loans by directors in fictitious names, and forging signatures of some directors who live abroad and did not come to Bangladesh in the last three years were the major allegations against the bank's Chairman Farasath Ali, Vice-chairman Toufique Rahman Chowdhury and Managing Director Dewan Mujibur Rahman.

Rahman went to the court seeing no headway in the BB move in dealing with the issue. The Daily Star also talked to the bank's Chairman Farasath Ali before publishing the report.