3 including bank manager jailed

A Chittagong court yesterday sentenced three people, including a former manager of Rupali Bank, to five year's imprisonment each in a corruption case filed over embezzlement of around Tk 90 lakh.

The court also fined the convicts Tk 30.12 lakh each in default of which they will serve additional six months in jail, said Public Prosecutor Mezbah Uddin Chowdhury.

The convicts are AKM Lutfar Rahman, Rupali Bank's Khatunganj Amir Market branch manager; Mahbubul Islam, an employee of Muslim and Brothers' in Khatunganj; and Zakir Hossain, former general secretary of Lalkhan Bazar Metropolitan Grihonirman Samobay Samity.

Of them, Zakir is in jail while the rest are on the run.

Lutfar, with connivance of Mahbubul, withdrew Tk 1.65 crore as a bank loan in the name of M/S Russell and Brothers in Khatunganj, using fake documents in 1992, said the PP.

Later, Tk 74.78 lakh was refunded but around Tk 90 lakh was misappropriated, he added.

To hide the embezzlement, Lutfar afterwards showed a land of Tk 23.61 lakh as of Tk 1.4 crore with the help of Zakir and submitted the records and documents to the bank.

The then Anti-Corruption Bureau Assistant Director Nurul Islam filed the case on August 27, 1994.