A former Bangladesh minister in ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's BNP government was found to have stashed away a million pound in a leading UK bank
A former Bangladesh minister in ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's BNP government was found to have stashed away a million pound in a leading UK bank and is being probed by British authorities about the money, a media report said on Monday.
The British authorities have written to the former energy minister Khandker Mosdharaf Hossain and his wife Bilquis Aktar to give details about the sources of the money after he had declared to have only 250,000 pounds in his account in Lloyds TSB Bank.
"There are reasonable grounds to suspect that Khandeker Hossain and Bilquis Hossain have conspired to launder the proceeds of criminal activities, and that substantial amount of money are involved," the Daily Star newspaper quoted the British investigation report as saying.
The British probes comes two weeks after the US and the UK agreed to help Bangladesh in recovering an estimated USD 200 million alleged to have been given as kickbacks by the companies to former premier Khaleda Zia's younger son and several other high-profile suspects and transfered to accounts in Singapore.
Officials of the Anti-Corruption Commission, which has been spearheading a massive anti-graft campaign against the high-profile graft suspects, confirmed the report saying that the amount in the minister's account was beyond his known or declared sources of income.
The ex-minister, who was detained for over a year face trial under the ACC campaign and came out on bail ahead of the December 29 general elections, claimed the amount found at the British bank actually was part of his earnings while he had studied in Britain in late 1960s and early 1970s.
But the investigations found that the account was only opened in 2003, while he was the minister.
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