A Dhaka court has ordered media circulars against former chief justice SK Sinha and 10 others regarding the arrest warrants against them for allegedly embezzling and laundering Tk 40 million from Farmers Bank (now Padma Bank).

Dhaka Senior Special Judge KM Imrul Kayes gave the order on Wednesday (Jan 22).

The order comes after the same court issued an arrest warrant against 11 people on Jan 5.

The others accused are AKM Shamim, former managing director of Farmers Bank, former SEVP Gazi Salauddin, first vice president Swapon Kumar Ray, former chief of the bank’s evaluation committee Mahbubul Haque Chisthi, first vice president Shafiuddin Askary, vice president Md Lutful Haque, Tangail residents Md Shahjahan, Niranjan Chandra Saha, Ranjit Chandra Saha and his wife Shanti Ray.

The court dropped former senior vice president Md Ziauddin Ahmed from the case after his death.

The ACC found that both Niranjan Chandra Saha and M Shahjahan deposited Tk 20 million each into Sinha’s personal account in Sonali Bank, transferred from their accounts with the Farmers Bank’s Gulshan Branch, by separate pay orders in 2016.

The duo had collected the money through a loan from the same bank, which was processed illegally, and without following due process with the help of the accused bank officials.

Ranajit was allegedly a personal secretary of Sinha’s, and Ranajit and Shahjahan are childhood friends, the ACC found during its investigation.

What the accused committed is a scheduled offence under the Money Laundering Prevention Act, 2012, the case statement says.

The ACC launched an enquiry on April 25, 2018, following up on a complaint from an unknown source, who said Tk 40 million had been deposited in the bank account of former chief justice Sinha from two accounts of Farmers Bank.

The anti-graft watchdog interrogated Shahjahan and Niranjan in this regard, who said they had transferred the money to Sinha as part of the payment for a six-storey building in Uttara, which he had sold to Tangail resident Santree in 2016, their lawyers told reporters on May 6, 2018.

ACC public relations official Pranab Kumar Bhattacharya confirmed then that Shahjahan and Niranjan had been interrogated from six hours at the ACC headquarters on May 7, 2018.

The ACC launched the investigation against Sinha four and half months after he stepped down as the chief justice on Nov 10, 2017 amid controversies over the 16th constitutional amendment.