Two senior officials of Aramit Group on Monday confessed to acting as agents in laundering money for former land minister Saifuzzaman Chowdhury Javed.
Utpal Pal, assistant general manager (finance) of Aramit Group, and Md Abdul Aziz, assistant general manager of Aramit Thai Aluminium Limited, gave confessional statements before Chattogram Metropolitan Magistrate SM Alauddin Mahmud in a case filed on charges of laundering Tk 25 crore from United Commercial Bank.
The Aramit companies are owned by the family of the former land minister.
According to their statements, the two admitted that they were not merely officials of Aramit Group but also worked as personal aides to Javed and his wife, former UCB chairperson Rukmila Zaman.
They said they were entrusted with managing the former minister鈥檚 illegal assets inside the country in addition to assisting with financial transactions.
ACC public prosecutor advocate Mokarram Hossain confirmed the developments, saying, 鈥業n remand, Utpal Pal and Abdul Aziz confessed in court that they acted as agents in laundering Tk聽25 crore taken from UCBL. They were also in-charge of handling personal accounts and assets of Saifuzzaman and his wife. They admitted to overseeing his illegal wealth within Bangladesh.鈥�
The Anti-Corruption Commission had earlier arrested the two on September 18 in connection with the case filed on July 24 accusing Saifuzzaman, his wife, siblings and 31 others of laundering Tk 25 crore from UCB.
Based on their information, investigators on Sunday seized 23 sacks of documents containing details of the couple鈥檚 overseas properties and financial transactions.
According to the case, Saifuzzaman and his family opened five shell companies in the names of Aramit officials. Through one of the entities, they applied for a 180-day repayable 鈥榯ime loan鈥� at United Commercial Bank, owned by the family, for import of wheat, chickpeas, turmeric and peas.
After sanctioning of Tk 25 crore, the funds were diverted into accounts of the other four shell entities before being siphoned abroad, the ACC said.
The ACC stated that one such shell firm, Imperial Trading, was opened in the name of arrested official Abdul Aziz. Part of the laundered money was deposited into that company鈥檚 bank account.
The commission said the fraudulent transactions occurred between 2019 and 2020, when Saifuzzaman was serving as land minister.
On March 5, a Dhaka court ordered the ACC to freeze 39 bank accounts of Saifuzzaman and his family, which together held Tk 5.26 crore in deposits.
In a separate order, the court directed the seizure of shares worth Tk 102 crore and 957 bighas of land owned by the accused.
Saifuzzaman served as state minister for land from 2014 to 2018 and as land minister from 2019 to 2023 during the Awami League regime which was ousted on August 5, 2024, in a mass uprising.
Just before a few days before the fall of Awami League government, Saifuzzaman along with his wife and family members left for London.
Several other cases also filed against Saifuzzaman and his wife on corruption allegations while the filing of three more cases were also approved against him on Sunday by the ACC.
