Shawdesh desk:

A Dhaka court on Wednesday sentenced Rafiqul Amin, managing director of Destiny Multipurpose Co-Operative Society Ltd, and 18 others to 12 years of jail in an embezzlement case.

Judge of Dhaka Special Judge Court-4 Md Rabiul Alam handed down the judgment in the presence of Rafiqul and two others.

The court also fined the convicts Tk 4, 515.57 crore, a double amount of money which they had laundered.

The other convicts included Destiny’s director Lieutenant General (retd) Harunur Rashid, chairman Md Hossain, vice-chairmen Mohammad Gorfanul Haque, Md Sayed-ur-Rahman, Mezbah Uddin Swapan, Sheikh Tayebur Rahman and Gopal Chandra Biswas, directors Syed Sazzad Hossain, Irfan Ahmed Sunny, Rafiqul’s wife Farah Diba and Jamshed Ara Chowdhury, profit sharing distributor Md Jasim Uddin Bhuiyan, Destiny Multipurpose Co-operative Society general secretary Zakir Hossain and member Abul Kalam Azad, diamond executives SM Ahsanul Kabir Biplob, Jobayer Sohel and Abdul Mannan and crown executive Mosaddek Ali Khan.

All the convicts except Rafiqul Amin, his wife, and Mohammad Hossan were tried in absentia.

Lieutenant General (retd) Harunur, who secured bail earlier, was also present at the court during the delivery of the judgment.

The court issued arrest warrants for the arrest of those who are absconding in the case.

On May 12, 2022, a Dhaka court sentenced all 46 accused, including Rafiqul Amin, his wife Farah Diba, and Destiny-2000 president Lieutenant General Harun (retd), to different terms of imprisonment in the money laundering case and fined them over Tk 2,300 crore.

Rafiqul Amin was sentenced to 12 years of imprisonment with Tk 200 crore fine and his wife Farah Diba was awarded eight years of imprisonment in this case.

On June 16, Rafiqul Amin moved the High Court against the sentence.

On July 31 in 2012, two separate cases were filed with the Kalabagan police station against Rafiqul and other officials of Destiny on charge of embezzling money from the investors in the name of Destiny Multipurpose Cooperative Society and Destiny Tree Plantation Limited and laundering it.

According to the case statement, Destiny group collected Tk 1,901 crore from the investors and embezzled Tk 1,861.45 crore of it. As a result, its eight lakh investors faced loss.