By IANS
Dhaka : Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia and her youngest son were arrested and sent to jail by a court here early Monday after corruption charges were filed against them and 11 others.
Zia and her son Arafat Rahman Koko were arrested at about 7.45 a.m. local time (01:45 GMT) and “unprecedented security” was arranged as they were taken to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate’s Court, Star Online said.
This is the first incarceration for Zia, who ruled the country for two terms (1991-96 and 2001-2006). She quit office on completion of term Oct 30, 2006.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed a case against Zia with the Tejgaon Police Station at midnight Sunday. It alleged that Zia, while in office as prime minister (2001-2006), abused power and appointed Koko’s Global Agro Trade Company (GATCO) as a contractor for both the Inland Container Depot in Dhaka and southeastern Chittagong port on March 1, 2003, without following a proper bidding procedure.
ACC said that Zia and Koko influenced the process and won the tender despite a three-member tender evaluation committee terming GATCO unfit for the work, The Daily Star said.
GATCO, a private handling company, is often blamed for inefficiency in handling containers. The shady recruitment of GATCO and subsequent problems arising from it cost the state coffers 10 billion taka (about $140 million), according to case details, Xinhua added.
The co-accused in the case are high profile politicians and former officials, including the wife and son of a former minister, Col. (retd) Akbar Hossain.
Many leaders of Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) have been held on charges of being involved in widespread corruption in the five years of the BNP-Jamaat regime.
The present army-backed interim government arrested Khaleda’s eldest son Tarique Rahman on March 8 on charges of extortion in several cases.
The government arrested another former prime minister Sheikh Hasina July 16 in an extortion case and detained her in a makeshift jail in the national parliament building complex.
Three more cases were filed against Hasina Sunday, media reports said. The same day Hasina submitted a statement before the jail authorities declaring her wealth that would be passed on to the ACC, after losing a two-month court battle.
Nearly 200 former ministers and MPs of both Khaleda and Hasina’s governments have been rounded up on charges of corruption, extortion and abuse of power since the caretaker government of Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed took office Jan 12 under the state of emergency.