Individual and small depositors of scam-hit People's Leasing & Financial Services (PLFSL) sought prime minister's intervention to get their "hard-earned" money back immediately.
A forum under which they have been waging protests for five years held a demonstration in front of the head office of the financial institution at Paramount Heights in the capital on Tuesday.
The protesters also submitted a memorandum to the newly-appointed chairman of People's Leasing, Hasan Shaheed Ferdous.
The forum put forward 10-point demands, including the payback of their money and said if their demands were not met soon, they would go for tougher movements.
Mohammad Atiqur Rahman Atiq, chief coordinator of the platform, said as many as 6,000 depositors of the People's Leasing were passing a miserable life.
He claimed that Tk 2 billion of the money swindled had already been recovered. Out of the amount, Tk 1 billion was spent on paying salaries of directors and chairman, said Mr Atiq.
"Instead of returning money to depositors from the remaining Tk 1 billion, they [the People's Leasing] are planning to distribute fresh loans. FDR was kept in a weak bank."
There is a fear of losing this money again, said Mr Atiq.
So, the forum wants depositors' money back at any cost as soon as possible.
Prashanta Kumar Halder, alias PK Halder, a former managing director of Reliance Finance and NRB Global Bank, swindled more than Tk 35 billion from four non-bank financial institutions, including the People's Leasing, in between 2014 and 2015.
Some former directors of the NBFI were also involved. The matter was disclosed in 2019.
PK Halder was arrested in India's West Bengal on May 14 last year.
Mr Atiq, from the depositors' forum, said the then directors of the company could loot depositors' money for a lack of supervision by the Bangladesh Bank.
Although some senior officials of the central bank had been monitoring the PLFS since 2015, some plunderers siphoned off a huge amount of money from the NBFI, he said.
The central bank did not take any punitive measure against the offenders, he alleged.
Samia Binte Mahbub, one of the depositors, said several depositors had already died of heart attack, having spent days with anxiety over the uncertainty of getting their money back,
Many depositors have fallen ill but are unable to bear treatment expenditure, she added.
The other demands include a renewal of Term Deposit Receipts (TDR) of depositors and distribution of profits against TDR from 2019 to 2023.
The NBFI had failed to repay depositors after the maturity of the funds. Default loans and net losses had also escalated.
Against this backdrop, the central bank sought permission of the High Court to liquidate the NBFI due to the deterioration of its financial health. The court accepted the central bank's plea and appointed a liquidator.
But later in June 2021, on receiving depositors' plea against liquidation, the High Court passed an order that the company must be restructured, not liquidated.
As per the liquidation rules, external creditors are paid off first and then the depositors, debenture holders and preferential shareholders in the order.
The problems of the PLFS, which got listed in the stock market in 2005, began in 2013-14, when some of its directors made off with more than Tk 10 billion by way of submitting fake documents, according to a central bank inspection report.
In 2015, the central bank removed five directors for their involvement in the financial scandal. But it was not enough. Since then the NBFI has been on a downward spiral.
As of February 28 this year, retail investors held 67.68 per cent of the NBFI's shares while sponsor-directors own 23.21 per cent. Institutional investors own 8.62 per cent and foreign investors 0.19 per cent shares.
The non-bank financial institution's share trading was suspended in July 2019 as shareholders rushed to dump their shares following the liquidation news.
Last trading price of the company was Tk 3 each share.
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