AFTER letting many businessmen get away with loan defaults, the government has finally become stern towards loan default and loan scammers by arresting Chattogram-based SA Group’s managing director. Also a director of Mercantile Bank, Sahabuddin Alam was arrested on Wednesday on at least five counts of loan irregularities. The irregularities include the illegal transfer of mortgaged assets, forgery of import documents and signatures of bank officials, cheque dishonour and willful non-payment of bank loans. His arrest makes us hope that the other loan defaulters, scammers, and bank officials and owners who are too powerful to be touched by law would be facing the music of laws to make us feel that laws are equal to all.
News media reported that the loan defaulter was picked up from the capital’s Gulshan area in the afternoon in a case filed by Bank Asia. Shahabuddin was later produced before a court which sent him to Keraniganj jail. Police didn’t seek his remand, saying they had already collected a lot of information from him. SA Group is one of the biggest loan defaulters in the country with more than Tk 3,500-crore loans from over a dozen banks and financial institutions.
These institutions have so far filed more than 100 cases against Shahabuddin. Two private enterprises also filed two cases against him over a claim of Tk 28 crore. Bank Asia lodged the case with the EPZ Police Station in Chattogram last year, alleging that he had forged import documents and forwarded those to the shipping agent concerned in 2014 for having released imported crude palm oil from the port. The private commercial bank has filed a total of 12 cases against him to recover its defaulted loans amounting to Tk 373 crore. National Bank filed 29 cases to recover Tk 421 crore non-performing loans, Prime Bank filed 45 cases over various charges, including non-payment of loans and illegal transfer of mortgaged assets. As per the law, a loan defaulter cannot be a director of a bank, but Shahabuddin still remains in the Mercantile Bank Board due to a court’s stay order. He got several facilities like loan restructuring from the central bank, but the central bank is too weak to take action against him.
We congratulate the law enforcement agencies for arresting the scammers and ask them to arrest other loan scammers, defaulters, and unscrupulous people who pushed the country’s economy near to collapse and planted irregularities in the banking sector so deeply.
