The Anti-Corruption Commission filed an appeal with the High Court yesterday challenging a lower court verdict that acquitted BNP Senior Vice-Chairman Tarique Rahman in a money laundering case, a lawyer said.
“We appealed against the lower court’s judgement and requested the High Court to cancel the previous verdict,” ACC panel lawyer Khurshid Alam told the Dhaka Tribune.
“The lower court verdict contains some legal errors, and the court, while delivering the verdict, did not consider the evidences [submitted by the ACC,” the lawyer claimed.
As per the money laundering prevention act, authorities concerned have to file the appeal within 30 days of the verdict. A Dhaka court on November 17 acquitted Tarique, the elder son of BNP chief Khaleda Zia, and sentenced his friend Giasuddin Al Mamun to seven years’ imprisonment and fined him Tk400m.
ACC Commissioner M Shahabuddin Chuppu said the ACC had decided to file the appeal after reviewing copy of the verdict. The anti-graft body on October 26, 2009 filed the case on charge of siphoning off Tk204.1m to Singapore between 2003 and 2007.
According to the copy of the judgement, Mamun was found guilty of siphoning off $75,000 deposited by a person named Khadiza Islam to a Citibank NA account in Singapore. He also deposited money extracted illegally from others to the account.
According to the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act 1974, it is illegal to open and deposit money to a foreign bank account without the consent of Bangladesh Bank. Tarique withdrew $50,000 from Mamun’s Citibank NA account, using a supplementary credit card on different dates and spent the money for his treatment and shopping in Singapore between 2003 and 2006.
The judgement said Tarique was acquitted from the money laundering charges because he had mentioned the amount in his wealth statement submitted to the ACC.
