DHAKA, 4 March 2008 — A court in Dhaka yesterday sentenced a cousin of former Prime Minister Hasina Wajed and former Awami League chief whip, Abul Hasnat Abdullah, to a total of 13 years in jail for amassing wealth by illegal means.
A.K.M. Arifur Rahman, the judge of a special anti-corruption court set up on the premises of the parliament secretariat, handed down the verdict in the absence of the accused.
Hasnat was also fined two million taka or two more years in jail in default.
The sentence will be effective from the date of Hasnat’s surrender or arrest since he remains fugitive, the court said.
The judge ordered confiscation of Hasnat’s illegally acquired assets.
The Awami League leader will have to spend 13 years behind bars as a total of two sentences of ten and three years served consecutively.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed the case on Sept. 6 after Hasnat’s submission of a wealth statement to the commission. According to the case filed with Dhanmondi police, Hasnat concealed information in his statement in which he claimed to own property worth 5.25 million taka.
Prosecutors in the case however said Hasnat had illegally acquired wealth amounting to over 10 million taka.
In a separate case, a Dhaka court sentenced Hasnat on Dec. 12 to nine years’ imprisonment on tax dodging charges.
Hasnat was named as one of the top graft suspects in a list published by the ACC on Feb. 18, 2007.
