A Dhaka court yesterday placed detained BNP leader Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain on three days’ remand rejecting his bail petition in a money laundering case filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC).
Metropolitan Magistrate Shamsul Arefin passed the order when ACC Deputy Commissioner Md Ahsan Ali, also investigation officer of the case, produced him before the court seeking a three-day remand.
Meanwhile, Mosharraf’s counsel Masud Ahmed Talukder filed bail petition along with a remand rejection plea.
During the hearing, Mosharraf said: “I earned the money while I was studying and teaching in the United Kingdom during 1970-1975. I invested the earned money in London share market. Later, the money was kept as Fixed Deposit Receipt (FDR) in the name of my wife Bilkis Akhter Hossain.”
Earlier in the day, the BNP Standing Committee member was taken to the ACC headquarters in the capital’s Segunbagicha from Ramna police station. He was questioned by the investigation officer for two and a half hours since 9:30am.
The BNP leader was picked up from his Gulshan residence on Wednesday night.
The ACC filed the case on February 6. According to the FIR, Mosharraf laundered £804,000 (equivalent to Tk9.54 crore) to the UK when he was health and family welfare minister during the 2001-2006 tenure of the BNP government. Mosharraf and his wife opened the account in the UK bank without approval of Bangladesh Bank, which is a violation of the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act, 1947.
On February 10, the High Court granted anticipatory bail to Mosharraf for six weeks but it was cancelled by the Supreme Court on February 24 following an ACC petition.
The BNP alleged that Mosharraf had been arrested in a false case with a view to divert the people’s attention from the misdeeds of the government centering upazila elections.
“The aim of the arrest is to divert the people’s attention from the illegal government’s misdeeds and to gag the opposition’s voice,” Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi Ahmed told reporters at the party’s Nayapaltan headquarters in the capital.
He demanded immediate and unconditional release of the leader.