BNP acting Chairperson Tarique Rahman’s money at the United Kingdom is tax paid at the Inland Revenue, claims the party’s Joint Secretary General Ruhul Kabir Rizvi.
His remarks came during a media call on Saturday (Apr 20) at the party headquarters in Naya Paltan.
Rizvi’s claim came two days after a Bangladeshi court ordered the authorities to take necessary measures to freeze three UK bank accounts belonging to Tarique and his wife Zubaida.
“I want to clearly state that he doesn’t have any illegal money there,” he said and added that the laws in Britain leave no chance of undisclosed monetary transactions.
Claiming that it was just another ploy on Anti Corruption Commission’s (ACC) part to drag Tarique through the mud, he added, “The [Bangladeshi] court has no jurisdiction in the legal matters in the UK.”
The senior leader alleged that the ACC at the government’s behest “used the court to pass the order” in a bid to put BNP in a tight spot.
Tarique was made the party’s acting chairman when his mother Khaleda was jailed in February last year on corruption charges. She is currently serving a 17-year term.
He has been handed life sentence in the Aug 21 grenade attack case and has been in London for over a decade now.
The BNP, however, claims that he “undergoing treatment” there.
He has also been given a seven-year jail term for siphoning off Tk 204.1 million during the BNP-Jamaat regime.
The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), after seizing Tk 180 million last year from Motijheel, claimed that Tarique was involved in trying to influence the national polls with Tk 1.5 billion brought illegally from abroad.
The Bangladeshi government, since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s regime, has been bent in trying to extradite him.