Alamgir Kabir era ends at Southeast Bank after 20 years

The era of Alamgir Kabir ended at the Southeast Bank after twenty years as the board of the private commercial bank elected a new chairman today.

The board of directors of the lender elected M A Kashem as its new chairman in its 743rd meeting today.

Kabir has been serving the bank as the chairman of the board since 2004.

MA Kashem was the founding chairman of the bank. In 2022, three directors, including MA Kashem, was removed from the board.

After the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government last month, the removed ones were getting back their directorship.

There are some allegations of irregularities including loans irregularities against Alamgir Kabir, who included some controversial people in the board of the bank.

When MA Kashem was removed from the board, Anjuman Ara Shahid, wife of former Padma Bank chairman Chowdhury Nafiz Sarafat, was included in the board.

In 2021, five founder directors of the bank have raised allegations of corruption, irregularities and money laundering against Alamgir Kabir.

They had sent a letter to Bangladesh Bank Governor Fazle Kabir at that time, saying the bank's deposits are in danger because of the chairman's corruption, fraud and money laundering.

The founder director had alleged that other directors and shareholders of the bank were "very annoyed" over the monopoly power of chairman Kabir as his corruption and irregularities put the depositors' money at risk.

The directors accused Kabir of "lending to his relatives; waiving interest on current loans without following rules and regulations".

The directors claimed that Kabir had given loans to various "ineligible companies", bypassing all other directors, and he took "special benefits" from the clients for issuing the loans.

According to the letter, Kabir unilaterally granted considerable loans to Bay Leasing and Investment Ltd, a non-banking financial institution controlled by his family. Bay Leasing's balance sheet did not show more than Tk 400 crore in loans it had taken.

The Daily Star tried to reach Alamgir Kabir over phone but he did not respond until the filing of the report.

At the end of June this year, total outstanding loans of Southeast Bank stood at Tk 36,199.80 crore, BB data showed.