Banking News of Bangladesh

Banking News of Bangladesh

Bangladesh Bank has uncovered another series of tricks at the Farmers Bank including advances of around Tk 500 crore that were endorsed to 11 organizations infringing upon keeping money standards and methodology.

Of the sum, advances of more than Tk 367 crore that the bank's Motijheel branch provided for 10 of the organizations from November 2013 to November a year ago have progressed toward becoming defaulted. A portion of the organizations are either dark or little-known.

The national bank has held the private bank's previous administrator Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir and ex-director of its official advisory group Mahabubul Haque Chisty to a great extent in charge of the tricks.

The inconsistencies are gross — some of those out and out misrepresentation — going from authorizing advances with no application to taking credits and not utilizing any of that for the reasons those were implied for.

The new discoveries came up in a BB test in December a year ago, several years after the national bank identified tricks including Tk 400 crore at the Farmers Bank's three branches in the capital's Gulshan, Motijheel and Shyampur.

The most recent BB examination found no less than 11 include of abnormalities dispensing the credits to the 11 organizations. They are NAR Sweaters Ltd, Advanced Development Technologies, Abeda Memorial Hospital, Index Housing, Al-Faruque Bags, Nahar Farmers Group, Apollo Trade International, Mollik Aquaculture Farm, Messers Premjoy, Mac Trading and Bangladesh Development Company.

Aside from NAR Sweaters Ltd, every one of these organizations have progressed toward becoming defaulters with the bank.

The private bank likewise hid data on the defaulted credits to demonstrate swelled benefit, rupturing the Banking Company Act 1991.

The bank's Motijheel branch turned to "out of line signifies" to demonstrate Tk 367 crore given to 10 organizations as unclassified credits however those as of now progressed toward becoming defaulted, as indicated by the BB.

The branch demonstrated just Tk 60 crore as defaulted advances till September a year ago. In any case, the BB test found that the sum was more than Tk 619 crore. The private bank had dispensed credits of Tk 1,038 crore between November 2013 and November a year ago, said the BB test report.

Two ex-chiefs of the Farmers Bank — Alamgir and Mahabubul — affirmed a noteworthy part of the advances, mishandling their position and without taking assent from other board individuals, it specified.

The bank's Motijheel branch gave advances of Tk 130 crore to NAR Sweaters Ltd in various stages in the vicinity of 2016 and a year ago however its head office dismissed the association's credit proposition.

The branch dispensed the assets to settle consecutive letters of credit (LCs) opened by NAR Sweaters. The RMG organization's remarkable credits remained at Tk 34.39 crore when the BB did the examination, said the report.

The private bank should pay for the LCs and make long haul advances against the firm in the event that it neglects to reimburse the credits in due time, it said.


NAR Sweaters as of now had defaulted advances of around Tk 50 crore at the Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd (IBBL) when it opened LCs with the Farmers Bank ahead of schedule in 2016.

In spite of the fact that the Farmers Bank administration realized that NAR Sweaters had past due credits with the IBBL, it enabled the firm to open LCs, a Farmers Bank official told this reporter.

Asked, Shahabuddin Ahmed, business director of the firm, said they recorded a writ appeal to with the High Court in 2016 for having regularized its defaulted advances with the IBBL.

The HC issued a stay arrange, requesting that the BB not demonstrate the credits as grouped, he said.

Shahabuddin additionally asserted his firm paid the Farmers Bank Tk 15 crore out of its levy of Tk 34.39 crore between January 1 and March 22 this year.

The RMG organization will again open LCs with the IBBL as it has as of late paid the bank Tk 2.67 crore to have rescheduled its defaulted credits, he included.

Additionally, Advanced Development Technologies, a real estate broker, got the Farmers Bank's endorsement to a Tk 45-crore advance as working capital inside hours of opening a record with its Motijheel Branch on February 28, 2016, as per the BB.

More often than not, it takes no less than several months for another customer to get a bank's endorsement to an advance.

After three months, the Farmers Bank affirmed another Tk 20-crore credit to the firm however it didn't get back even piece of the past advance with reimbursement time of one year.