PK Halder’s Scam: Officials were punished for not signing off loans

File photo of PK Halder

Officials of FAS Finance and Investment who declined to sign off on loan applications to fictitious organisations were punished with no promotion or transferred to remote offices by rogue banker PK Halder's men.

At one stage, the then FAS management began to bypass junior officials and directly sanctioned fake loans, finds investigators of the Anti-Corruption Commission, who quizzed 12 former and current officials of different ranks of the non-bank financial institution yesterday in connection with misappropriation of about Tk 1,300 crore.

During the interrogation, the officials admitted that Proshanta Kumar Halder, also known as PK Halder, was the ringleader and upon his direction, the then management embezzled money, said an ACC investigator on condition of anonymity.

On August 8, the ACC summoned 34 people, including the former managing director and directors of FAS Finance, to quiz over the embezzlement.

A four-member team led by ACC's Deputy Director Gulshan Anowar Prodhan are quizzing them. They are scheduled to quiz another 12 persons today.

Recently, investigators have found the involvement of Halder, a former managing director of NRB Global Bank and Reliance Finance, and 74 others in the embezzlement of about Tk 2,000 core from the NBFIs International Leasing and Financial Services Limited (ILFSL) and FAS Finance between 2014 and 2019.

The money was misappropriated through fake loans by 20 fictitious business organisations, according to the ACC's investigation.

Take the example of misappropriation of about Tk 45 crore by one Konika Enterprize.

Ram Prashad Roy, the proprietor of Konika Enterprize, applied for a working capital loan on November 30, 2017 to FAS against 200 decimal land worth about Tk 25.6 crore as collateral.

FAS in its 194th meeting of the board of directors approved the Tk 45 crore short-term loan on December 13, 2017.

In the enquiry, the ACC found that Halder was the owner of the land. Though no money was repaid, the FAS board renewed the loan on December 24, 2018. During the enquiry, the balance of the loan was found to be about Tk 49.18 crore.

The money was supposed to be used by Konika to purchase capital machinery but the ACC found that of the Tk 45 crore, about Tk 11.32 crore was used to repay a loan of seven companies with ILFSL.

About Tk 4 crore was used to adjust MTB Marine's loan with FAS Finance, while Tk 5 crore was transferred to One Bank's Chattogram Branch's client JK Trade International's account and Tk 2 crore to Mercantile Bank's Mohakhali Branch's client Fashion Plus's account.

About Tk 18 crore was deposited at Konika Enterprize's account with Bank Asia.

Established in 1997, FAS Finance became mired in irregularities in recent times and is under the scanner of the Bangladesh Bank.

On June 6, the BB refused to allow FAS Finance's former MD Pritish Kumar Sarker to travel to the US.

The anti-graft watchdog filed 15 cases against 70 persons for misappropriating about Tk 1,132 crore of ILFSL. In these cases, Halder has been made the prime accused.

Halder put his men at the helm of the financial institutions so that he could easily take loans from those and misappropriate the funds.

He took loans from financial institutions against non-existent companies created by him. In some cases, he used part of the funds to repay instalments of loans taken against his several fictitious firms.