The High Court on Tuesday suspended a Tk 1.5 lakh fine imposed on scam-ridden Destiny Multipurpose Co-Operative Society Ltd’s chairman, Mohammad Hossain, in a money laundering case.

A bench of Justice Md Nazrul Islam Talukder and Justice Khizir Hayat passed the order during a hearing on a petition in this regard.

Mohammad Hossain was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined Tk 1.5 lakh in the case. Failure to pay the fine would see him spend additional one year in jail.

Hossain has just completed his 10 years in jail. But as he never paid the fine, he was potentially looking at spending another year in jail, till the petition was filed.  As the High Court suspended the fine, there remains no bar to his release from prison now, said M Sarwar Hossain, the petitioner’s lawyer.

However, he has meanwhile been convicted in another case for misappropriating funds from a tree plantation project. So he will have to remain behind bars for now, said Sarwar Hossain. A hearing on his bail plea in the case will be heard by the court next week.

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In May, a Dhaka court sentenced all 46 accused, including Destiny Group MD Rafiqul Amin, his wife Farah Diba, and Destiny-2000 president Lt Gen Harun (retd), to different terms in prison in the money laundering case, and fined them a combined Tk 2,300 crore.

Rafiqul Amin was given 12 years in prison, with a Tk 200 crore fine, while his wife Farah Diba was awarded eight years' imprisonment.

On June 16, Rafiqul Amin moved the High Court against the sentence.

Of the 46 accused, Rafiqul Amin, Mohammad Hossain, M Harun-ur-Rashid, Jasmine Akhter, Ziaul Haque and Saiful Islam are currently in jail.

Didarul Alam, another one of the accused, went home after the verdict was announced as his jail term was complete.

The remaining 39 accused in this case are absconding.

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In July 2012, two separate cases were filed with the Kalabagan police station against Rafiqul and other officials of Destiny on the allegation of embezzling money from the investors in the name of Destiny Multipurpose Cooperative Society and Destiny Tree Plantation Limited and laundering it.

According to the case complaint, Destiny Group collected Tk 1,901 crore from the investors and embezzled Tk 1,861.45 crore of it. As a result, its eight lakh investors were swindled of their rightful return.