Dhaka: A Dhaka court has indicted main oppositon Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief Khalida Zia's younger son Arafat Rahman Koko in absentia on a money-laundering charge, court officials and reports said here on Wednesday.
They said Special Court judge Mozammel Haque framed the charges against Koko and a fugitive son of a former minister in Zia's BNP-led four-party coalition cabinet and ordered trial hearing on January 4.
"The trial [against Koko and co-accused Esmail Hossain Saimon] will continue in their absence," a court official quoted the judge as saying after the indictment yesterday.
Koko was arrested on September 2, 2007 on graft charges under a massive anti-graft campaign under emergency rules by the military-backed interim government and was paroled for treatment abroad in July 2008.
Parole scrapped
The incumbent government of Prime Minister Shaikh Hassina scrapped the parole and ordered his return from Bangkok earlier this year but the Supreme Court stayed the order in October allowing him to stay for six more weeks abroad.
His co-accused Saimon was declared fugitive as he was on the run since the installation of the army-backed government in January 2007 after a presidential declaration of state of emergency.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) in November 2008 formally accused Koko of siphoning off 2.88 million Singaporean dollars (Dh8.07 million) and $932,000 (Dh3.43 million) out of the country.
This charge came as the ACC carried out the investigation teaming up with United States and British authorities to recover millions of dollars stashed by Koko and several other high-profile suspects in Singapore banks.
Singaporean authorities in December 2008 froze assets worth $1.6 million associated with a company Koko established in 2004.
