Justice Sinha ‘has 3-storey building in New Jersey’
Seven months after tendering his resignation on November 10, 2017 from the post of chief justice, Surendra Kumar Sinha had bought a three-storied building in the US for $280,000.
Investigators of the Anti-Corruption Commission found he bought the house in Paterson, New Jersey with illegal money.
Of the $280,000, $256,468 was transferred from Indonesia and Canada to Sinha's younger brother Ananta Kumar Sinha's account with Valley National Bank's Paterson branch between March and April of 2018.
The bank found the transactions to be suspicious and froze the account, said an ACC official preferring to be unnamed.
Later, Sinha visited the bank along with his brother to withdraw about $157,090.
"He told the bank that he got the money from one of his friends to buy a house. While he was chief justice, he used to transfer his illegal wealth through hundi and kept those in his brother's account," the official said.
They later bought the house for $280,000 on June 12, 2018 by paying cash upfront.
"He laundered the money while travelling abroad for various purposes as justice," the official said, adding that the findings have already been submitted before the commission for approval to file a case.
To find out about Sinha's wealth, the ACC wrote to Canada, the US, the UAE and Singapore for information. The US responded with information on the house.
Earlier, Gulshan Anowar Prodhan, the deputy director of the ACC, filed a case against SK Sinha for allegedly amassing more than Tk 7 crore illegally.
The former chief justice had spent the sum constructing a nine-storey building in Uttara on a plot registered in his brother's name.
According to the report of an independent architect, about Tk 6.31 crore was spent on the construction of the building, reads the FIR.
About Tk 75 lakh was spent to buy the plot and about Tk 78 lakh remain frozen in banks, according to the case statement.
On November 9, 2021, a court sentenced Sinha to seven years in prison for money laundering and another four years for breach of trust. Both the sentences are to be served concurrently.
The court had also asked the authorities concerned to confiscate Tk 78 lakh frozen in the banks in favour of the state.
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