bdnews24.com :
The Anti-Corruption Commission or ACC has refused to give former BASIC Bank chairman Sheikh Abdul Hye Bachchu time on health grounds and asked him to face further questioning for graft charges.
Bachchu faced ACC interrogations on Dec 4 and Dec 6 but skipped the third day of questioning on Dec 17 by forwarding an application seeking a month to attend the hearing because of ill health. He was interrogated for seven hours by the ACC investigators on Dec 6. ACC spokesperson Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya told bdnews24.com the ACC rejected his application and would be issuing a notice asking him to appear before the commission for further questioning. “If he does not turn up, further measures will be taken against him,” he added.
The ACC deputy director for public relations said Bachchu said in his application that he was in the hospital for a single day. The ACC has appointed Deputy Director Shamsul Alam to investigate Bachchu’s wealth. The government appointed Bachchu as chairman of BASIC Bank in 2009. He resigned amid mounting pressure following a loan scam in 2014. ACC later filed 56 cases relating to graft but Bachchu was not charged.
The ACC move to investigate Bachchu came after the Supreme Court expressed its displeasure for leaving the ‘chairman’ out of the investigation.
Bachchu is now being investigated in 15 cases involving the scam. At the end of the first day’s interrogation, Bachchu told reporters that “he does not consider himself guilty of those loan anomaly charges.”
