The High Court has accepted the appeal of Rafiqul Amin, managing director of Destiny Multipurpose Co-Operative Society Ltd, against the sentence of imprisonment with a fine given to him by a lower court in a case filed over money laundering.
The court also suspended the order to pay Tk200 crore as a fine by Rafiqul Amin.
The bench of Justice SM Kuddus Zaman and Justice Md Riaz Uddin Khan passed the order on June 22, said Ujjal Kumar Bhowmik, Rafiqul Amin’s lawyer, on Monday.
“The court has accepted to hear the appeal and also summoned the case record from the trial court,” he said.
On May 12, a Dhaka court sentenced all 46 accused, including Destiny Group MD Rafiqul Amin, his wife Farah Diba, and Destiny-2000 president Lt Gen (retd)Harun, to different terms of imprisonment in the money laundering case and fined Tk2,300 crore.
Rafiqul Amin was given 12 years imprisonment with a Tk200 crore fine and his wife Farah Diba was awarded eight-years imprisonment in this case.
On June 16, Rafiqul Amin moved the High Court against the sentence.
Of the 46 accused, Rafiqul Amin, Mohammad Hossain, M Harun-ur-Rashid, Jasmine Akhter, Ziaul Haque and Saiful Islam are currently in jail.
While Didarul Alam, one of the accused, went home after the verdict was announced as his jail term was completed.
The remaining 39 accused in this case are absconding.
On 31 July 2012, two separate cases were filed with the Kalabagan police station against Rafiqul and other officials of Destiny on the allegation of embezzling money from the investors in the name of Destiny Multipurpose Cooperative Society and Destiny Tree Plantation Limited and laundering it.
According to the case, Destiny group collected Tk1,901 crore from the investors and embezzled Tk1,861.45 crore of it. As a result, its 8,00,000 investors faced losses.