By Xinhua
Dhaka : Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia and her youngest son were arrested here early Monday on charges of abusing power.
Immediately after the arrest at about 7.45 a.m. local time (01:45 GMT), she and her son Arafat Rahman Koko were driven in a long motorcade of security personnel and produced before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Court hearing the case.
The Anti-Corruption Commission Sunday midnight filed a case with Tejgaon Police Station. It alleged that Khaleda 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.
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.
The army-backed present interim government arrested Khaleda’s eldest son Tarique Rahman on March 8 on charges of several extortion 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.
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 led by Chief Advisor Fakhruddin Ahmed took office Jan 12 under the state of emergency. Over a dozen ex-ministers and MPs have already been sentenced in different terms by special anti-corruption courts.