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The Supreme Court has opened the scope for law enforcers to arrest four persons implicated in 20 corruption cases concerning the Basic Bank scam.
At the same time, the apex court scrapped an earlier High Court order that asked them to surrender in the lower court concerned within six weeks.
A three-member bench of the Appellate Division, headed by Chief Justice Hasan Foez Siddique, passed the order after hearing some petitions filed by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) and by the accused.
The accused are Sadia Akhter Shahin and ASM Anisur Rahman, AGMs of Basic Bank's head office, Md Jalal Uddin, an AGM of Motijheel local office, and Rumana Ahad, an AGM of Gulshan branch.
Lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan appeared in the court hearing on behalf of the ACC while lawyer AM Masum appeared for the accused.
According to Mr Khan, there is no bar to arrest the accused in the cases now.
On August 03, the HC asked four accused to surrender in the lower court concerned within six weeks.
It also asked the lower court to consider their bail on surrender.
The HC bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Khizir Hayat passed the direction after disposing of 20 petitions that sought anticipatory bail in the cases.
Following a petition filed by the ACC, the chamber judge of the Appellate Division on August 09 stayed the HC order for eight weeks.
The accused then filed petitions with the regular bench seeking to vacate the chamber judge's order.
The ACC also filed petitions with the regular bench against the HC order.
However, the apex court on Monday heard the petitions together and disposed of them by scraping the HC order.
On June 12 this year, the ACC approved the charge sheet against former BASIC Bank chairman Sheikh Abdul Hye Bacchu and 146 others in connection with 59 cases filed over embezzlement of Tk 22.65 billion.
The commission, however, did not implicate the then board members who were at the helm of the bank when the massive embezzlement took place between 2009 and 2013.
At that time, there were 10-11 members on the board of the bank and most of them were either running or former government employees.
Between 2009 and 2013, Tk 45 Billion was swindled out of this once healthy public bank. Of the sum, more than 95 percent was sanctioned by the board.
In 2015, the ACC filed 56 cases in connection with the scam, but curiously neither Bacchu nor any board member was named as accused although multiple probes indicated their involvement.
Later, four cases were filed.
However, the charge sheet against Bacchu, a former member of parliament, took eight years to come by.
Bacchu was made accused in 58 cases, according to officials with knowledge of the proceedings.
The ACC implicated 101 clients and 45 bank officials in the cases.
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