Hall-Mark Loan Scam
Sonali directors put blame on management
Immediate-past directors of Sonali Bank yesterday tried to wash their hands of the Hall-Mark loan scam and blamed the Tk 2,686 crore swindle squarely on the bank’s management.
A four-member parliamentary probe committee held a meeting with the bank’s nine former directors for nearly three hours at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban.
“They (directors) claimed Hall-Mark had swindled the money in collaboration with the bank’s management (officials),” Tajul Islam, the committee chief, told reporters following the meeting.
Asked why the board had failed to detect such a big scam, he said the former directors’ answers to that, according to the committee, were satisfactory.
The board expired on August 9 after a three-year term. Between 2010 and May 2012, Hall-Mark pocketed Tk 2,686 crore from the bank’s Ruposhi Bangla Hotel branch through letters of credit (LC). The LCs had been opened apparently to purchase yarn and other materials for making finished products for exports.
A central bank report in May this year revealed that most of those LCs had been opened against forged documents. The Hall-Mark Group took away the money by selling those documents to other banks after Sonali Bank had approved those.
The then board of directors said they had been totally unaware of the Hall-Mark loans but still claimed to be successful in operating the country’s largest bank.
“I don’t think we have failed to play our role in the bank’s operation,” said Kashem Humayun, one of the nine directors.
The loans were taken out in two years but the big chunk of the cash was taken in the six months from October 2011, said another board member Anwar Shahid.
The management had never placed memos (documents) of Hall-Mark loans before the board, he said, “We came to know of the issue from the Bangladesh Bank report.”
KM Zaman Romel, the then head of Sonali Bank’s audit committee (comprising board members) that had a role to play, declined to talk to the media.
“I’m no longer with the bank,” was all he said.
Generally, a loan worth Tk 10 crore and more has to be placed and granted by the board and loans of Tk 5 crore or below Tk 10 crore can be approved by the Executive Committee of the board. Loans below these two ranges mentioned can pass through the management.
For a first-time borrower, even a Tk 1 crore loan has to be brought to the board’s notice. But it varies from one bank to another.
Pradip Kumar Dutta, managing director of the state-run bank, who was also present at the meeting, declined to make any comment when the bank’s board blamed the management for the irregularities.
I’ll not say anything because it is under investigation.”
Pradip, however, admitted to the management’s failure in supervising the loans.
A chief executive officer of a private bank, asking not to be named, disagreed with the then Sonali Bank board of directors.
“The loans that Sonali gave Hall-Mark were not within the power of the management. It is very unusual that the bank’s board did not know it,” said the CEO.
Besides, the audit committee had authority over the day to day transactions, he said, and so it could ask for any information from the management.
Mayeedul Islam, a member of the parliamentary probe committee, told The Daily Star, “Criminals, whoever they are, must get punished.”
Meanwhile, Anti-Corruption Commission Chairman Ghulam Rahman said the anti-graft body would sue 27 senior officials of the Hall-Mark Group and Sonali Bank today.
The ACC has also decided to investigate the wealth of the bank’s eight former directors and its chairman.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
