The special tribunal for stock market yesterday acquitted Kutubuddin Ahmed on the charge of illegal private placement share trade.
This is the fifth verdict of the tribunal that has been dealing with 22 stock market-related cases since June this year, when the tribunal began to function. The cases were transferred to the tribunal from different courts.
In 2000, Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission had filed a case against Kutubuddin Ahmed who is a former managing director of Saudi Bangladesh Industrial and Agricultural Investment Company Limited, popularly known by its acronym SABINCO.
In the case, the regulator alleged that he, in league with some other officials, made money by trading shares at a time through different brokerage firms to influence the share prices.
“Shamim was found not guilty, as the BSEC has failed to produce any proof against him, ” said the tribunal judge Humayun Kabir while giving the verdict.
In his reaction, defence lawyer Md Bourhan Uddin said the accused even did not know about the case and the main plaintiff of the case was not produced before the tribunal.
But BSEC assistance lawyer Mustafizur Rahman said the accused was freed as the securities regulator failed to present its surveillance department report on share scam.
Earlier, the BSEC investigative team found that during June-July 2000, Kutubuddin Ahmed invested Tk3 crore in the stock market and artificially jacked up share prices.
On October 27 this year, the special tribunal in its fourth verdict freed Shattaruzzaman Shamim from the charge of unlawful placement share trade.
On August 31, it sentenced the managing director and a director of Chic Textiles to four-year imprisonment in its third verdict in a 1996 stock market scam case.
On August 17, the tribunal handed down three-year jail to Bangladesh Welding Electrodes Managing Director Nurul Islam and the then Weekly Industry Editor Enayet Karim for share price manipulation in 2007.
It also fined them Tk20 lakh each and said they would need to serve six more months in jail if they failed to pay the fine in time.
On August 3, the tribunal delivered its first verdict with two-year imrisonment to stock tipster Mahbub Sarwar for illegally influencing the stock market through blogs and websites during the market bubble and bust in 2010-11.