MA Khaleque Khan, managing director of International Leasing and Financial Services (ILFSL), has resigned from his post on Wednesday on health grounds.
“He resigned owing to pressure from some members of the board,” said a high official of the 24-year-old NBFI seeking anonymity due to sensitivity of the matter.
Khan, who took over as the NBFI of the beleaguered NBFI on June 14 last year, was threatened by some influential people while trying to recover loans of ILFSL, which is undergoing serious financial crisis after fraudulent businessman Proshanta Kumar Halder bled it dry.
The company logged in losses of Tk 252.4 crore for the first nine months of 2020, in contrast to a profit of Tk 2.5 crore a year earlier.
MA Khaleque Khan
With help from a top official of ILFSL, Halder misappropriated about Tk 2,500 crore from the NBFI, found the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in its enquiry.
Halder fled to Canada with at least Tk 3,500 crore taken from ILFSL and three other NBFIs: Peoples' Leasing and Financial Services (PLFSL), Reliance Finance and FAS Finance and Investment.
According to investigation officers, Halder created some businesses that existed only on paper. He then took loans using those businesses and fled.
Rahshedul Haque, former MD of ILFSL, helped Halder get the loans.
Before joining ILFSL in 2015, Haque worked as deputy MD of Reliance Finance, when Halder was its MD.
In 2015, Halder became the MD of NRB Global Bank, which has since been renamed Global Islami Bank.
Documents show Halder's organisation HAL International owned 7.4 percent shares of IFLSL in 2015 and 2016.
Being a shareholder of IFLSL and with Haque's help, Halder tookloans worth about Tk 2,500 crore for 40 fake organisations.
Without any scrutiny, Haque approved the loans and severely harmed IFLSL, according to the ACC enquiry.
Earlier in March last year, Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled, a former deputy governor of the Bangladesh Bank, stepped down from his post as the chairman of ILFSL, just 25 days after he was appointed in that post following a High Court order.
Listed with the stock exchange since 2007, shares of ILFSL closed Wednesday at Tk 5.8, which is the same as in the previous day. Its shares lost about 65.7 per cent in value over the past two years.
Khan could not be reached at the time of filing the report.
