Plea to unfreeze Khaleda\\\'s accounts

Govt seeks to know status from NBR | Published: April 12, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

Doulot Akter Mala
The government has moved to review the status of frozen bank accounts of BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia following a plea of the party leaders.
Sources concerned say the ministry of finance wrote a letter to the Central Intelligence Cell (CIC) of the National Board of Revenue (NBR) seeking to know about the status of Khaleda Zia's accounts frozen six years before.
The CIC also has already sent details about the accounts to the MoF, they say.
The revenue board is likely to sit with the BNP chairperson's representatives handling her tax issues on April 17 next, according to the sources.
The NBR is yet to take any decision on unfreezing the bank accounts as demanded by the BNP, as NBR Chairman Ghulam Hussain is not in the country now, a senior NBR official has said.
The NBR chief is scheduled to return home by April 14, he has added.
The CIC had frozen bank accounts of both BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia and Awami League chief and incumbent Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2007 after the 1/11 political changeover during the regime of the last caretaker government.
Talking to the FE, BNP chairperson's tax lawyer Ahmed Azam Khan said they had applied for unfreezing the bank accounts of the party chief in 2011 but got no response yet.
"It is frustrating that the bank accounts of Awami League president Sheikh Hasina have been unfrozen just one year after the freezing but the BNP chairperson's could not be even in the last seven years," he added.
A total of eight bank accounts of Khaleda Zia have been frozen by the CIC. Pensions of late President Ziaur Rahman and house rents of Khaleda Zia are being deposited with two of those frozen bank accounts.
A senior tax official said the NBR had unfrozen the bank accounts of Sheikh Hasina following a written application, signed by her, but Begum Khaleda Zia had never applied for that. He, however, acknowledged that it could not be any barrier to unfreezing the accounts of Khaleda Zia.
"The taxmen may review the legal aspects of unfreezing the accounts of Khaleda Zia," he added.
The issue came up for discussion in a recent cabinet meeting where some ministers of the incumbent government favoured unfreezing the accounts while some others did not.
Currently, the CIC allows Khaleda Zia to withdraw a monthly amount of Tk 50,000 from the frozen bank accounts, which, according to the BNP, is insufficient to meet her expenditure.
At a press briefing Tuesday the party leaders claimed the former Prime Minister had been facing a financial crisis and unable to pay her house rents.