Business Desk:
The Bangladesh Bank decided not to consider applications of three banks – Agrani Bank, ONE Bank, and Mutual Trust Bank – that sought exemptions from penalties awarded to them because of their submission of false Credit Information Bureau (CIB) reports.
The decision came during a board meeting of the central bank on Monday.
According to sources, the Bangladesh Bank earlier fined the Agrani Bank and Mutual Bank because they had concealed loan default status information of some clients in their CIB reports while ONE Bank was penalised for providing false information in its report.
Being penalised, all three banks had requested the central bank to release them from paying the fines.
But the 417th meeting of board of directors of the Bangladesh Bank upheld the penalties that they earlier handed over to the accused banks, Serajul Islam, executive director of Bangladesh Bank told the media.
During the meeting, the central bank formed another Tk500 crore refinancing scheme for the salary payments of employees working in the country’s tourism sector. Earlier this, the central bank had formed a Tk1000 crore scheme at 8% interest for some sub-sectors under the tourism sector aiming to enable entrepreneurs to pay salaries of their employees.
In these re-financing schemes, the government would pay 4% of the interest while another 4% will be paid by the entrepreneurs who take loans from these funds. Recently, it was revealed by the Bangladesh Bank that the capital market-listed ONE Bank Limited has cooked up all its key figures to jack up its profit so that its directors, who hold over 30% of the bank’s shares, can take out more money in the form of cash dividends.
This was because the regulator fined this private commercial bank.
On the other hand, Agrani Bank had hidden the information of its three default clients in its CIB report, forcing the Bangladesh Bank to fine this state-owned commercial bank.
Meanwhile, the Mutual Trust Bank was fined because it had concealed default loan information of a client in its CIB report.
