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About two dozen rules issued by the High Court suo motu on corruption and money laundering allegations have been awaiting hearing for long.

Different High Court benches issued about two dozen rules either suo motu or in writ petitions on corruption and money laundering allegations in 2020–23, according to deputy attorney general AKM Amin Uddin Manik, who appeared in the cases for the state.

The cases are pending with the courts for hearing and reports on and replies to a number of such rulings have already been received by the attorney general office, he said.

A number of Supreme Court lawyers said that they observed hardly any hearing in such rulings for a long time.

The Appellate Division has, meanwhile, scrapped a suo motu High Court order for an investigation into alleged money laundering and offshore investment of Tk 11,000 crore by S Alam Group chairman Mohammad Saiful Alam and his wife Farzana Parveen.

The apex court on August 23, 2023 ordered the maintenance of the status quo over the High Court order. It scrapped the High Court order on February 5, 2024 in its verdict on the couple’s appeal.

The Anti-Corruption Commission’s lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan said that the High Court was not hearing the suo motu rules on corruption and money laundering matters as the Appellate Division discouraged such rules in the verdict in the S Alam case.

Sayeed Ahmed Raza, lawyer of former lawmaker Kamrul Ashraf Khan Poton in a suo motu rule on reported embezzlement of 72,000 tonnes of imported urea fertiliser, also said that the verdict disapproved suo motu rules on the basis of the newspaper reports.

Supreme Court Bar Association president AM Mahbub Uddin Khokon, however, said that the Appellate Division delivered the verdict in a particular case and the High Court should not have any problem to hear and dispose of the suo motu rules.

Attorney general AM Amin Uddin, however, declined to comment without getting information of the specific cases.

Deputy attorney general AKM Amin Uddin Manik said that he would appeal to the court to hear and dispose of the pending rules.

A number of Supreme Court lawyers said that the hearing and disposal of the pending rules were urgent as those involved matters of urgent public interest and the rule of law.

The High Court bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Ahmed Sohel in a suo motu rule on November 22, 2020 asked the government and the ACC to submit details of politicians, businesspeople and others who siphoned money abroad, including Malaysia, Singapore, the United States, Canada and Australia.

The court passed the order taking into account a remark of then foreign minister AK Abdul Momen that he had received information from an unofficial channel that many Bangladeshis bought luxurious houses in a neighbourhood called Begum Para in Canada for millions of dollars laundered from Bangladesh.

The latest hearing in the case was held on October 12, 2023.

The same bench on January 5, 2021 slapped an international travel ban on 25 people, including family members of former NRB Global Bank managing director Prashanta Kumar Halder, former Bangladesh Bank deputy governor SK Sur, former education secretary Nazrul Islam Khan, who was chairman of International Leasing and Financial Services Limited, PK Halder’s mother Lilaboti Halder, and his cohort Uzzal Kumar Nandi, for their alleged connection with the money laundering scam suspect.

The bench passed the order after hearing an application filed by five ‘cheated investors’ of People’s Leasing and Financial Services.

PK Halder, now in Kolkata jail, is facing a number of cases on charge of embezzlement and laundering of money of various financial institutions.

The same court on February 28, 2021, in a writ petition filed by Supreme Court lawyers Subir Nandi Das and Abdul Kaium Khan, asked the government and the commission to report to it the details of people and companies who kept money in Swiss and other offshore banks. The court also asked the authorities to inform it the steps taken to bring back the laundered money.

During hearing on the writ petition, the court on January 30, 2022 asked the authorities to submit progress reports on the probe into alleged money laundering and investment in offshore companies by individuals and business entities named in leaked Panama Papers and Paradise Papers as depositors of Swiss and other offshore banks.

The court again on August 14, 2022 asked 13 authorities to submit the details of depositors of Swiss and other foreign banks.

Subir said that he lost interest in the hearing of the case as it had not been heard for long.

The bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Khizir Hayat in a suo motu ruling on October 18, 2022 asked the ACC to report to the court about action taken against 249 Bangladesh Bank officials, including nine former high-ups, involved in various financial scams worth Tk 3,700 crore.

The BB officials include former deputy governors SK Sur, SM Moniruzzaman and Md Nazrul Huda and six executive directors AHM Khasru, Md Nawshad Ali Chowdhury, Md Mahfuzur Rahman, Sheikh Abdullah, Zoardar Israil Hossain and Md Shah Alam, 11 general managers, 15 deputy general manager and 124 others officials of different levels.

The same bench on January 15, 2023 ordered probe into reported huge property of 459 Bangladeshis in Dubai and submit a progress report to it.

The same bench on January 2, 2023 issued a suo motu rule asking the ACC to investigate the missing of the 30,000 applications filed with the Rajdhani Unnayan Katripakkha seeking approval for building plans between May 2019 and December 6, 2022. The files were missing from the National Data Centre.

ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan said that the ACC was yet to submit the probe report to the court. 

The court also asked the Rajuk chairman to take appropriate action against those involved in the missing of the 30,000 documents.

Rajuk in a report to the court on May 2, 2023 said that it had recovered 26,777 file and files were removed from the National Data Centre due to attack by ‘malicious access’.

There is no hearing in another suo motu rule issued by the same bench on March 12, 2023 asking the ACC to investigate the financial anomalies amounting Tk 477 crore at the only state-owned pharmaceutical company, Essential Drugs Company Ltd.

On January 5, 2023 the same bench asked the Bangladesh Chemical Industries Corporation chairman to explain actions taken against the Poton Traders for allegedly embezzling 72,000 tonnes of imported urea fertiliser causing loss of Tk 582 crore to the state exchequer.

The court also asked the ACC to investigate the allegation of embezzling 72,000 tonnes of urea by Poton Traders of former independent lawmaker Kamrul Ashraf Khan Poton.

The suo motu rule has not been heard for a long period, said Poton’s lawyer Sayeed Ahmed Raza.

He said that the Appellate Division disapproved the issuance of suo motu rules based on newspaper report.

The Appellate Division in the verdict on February 5, 2024 scrapped a suo motu High Court order for probe into the reported money laundering and offshore investment of Tk 11,000 crore by Saiful Alam and his wife.

The High Court on August 6, 2023 issued the rule asking 14 authorities to explain their inaction in taking actions against the entities and people who misappropriated and laundered money from Bangladesh to Singapore, Cyprus and other foreign countries using various unethical mechanisms.

The court passed the orders after lawyer Syed Sayedul Haque Sumon, now a ruling Awami League lawmaker, drew its attention to a newspaper report.

The Appellate Division in the verdict observed that it failed to discover anything to show that lawyer Sayedul Haque or any authority of the Bangladesh Bank or the newspaper editor ever tried to file any application before the ACC to investigate the matter mentioned in the newspaper report.

‘So it was not proper for the High Court Division to ask the ACC and other respondents to answer why their inaction should not declared illegal,’ the Appellate Division observed.

It said, ‘Since no initiative has ever been taken from any corner to bring this matter to the notice of the respondents, how it can be said that respondents failed to act in accordance with law?’

The Appellate Division says, ‘It is to be noted that from the order of the High Court Division it appears to us that it has already presumed that the leave petitioner is an accused of misappropriation of money and money laundering to the various countries, without holding any inquire.

‘Unless inquiry is held or court finds any prima facie against any person, every person should be presumed innocent,’ the Appellate Division observed.