Janata Bank gets go-ahead to regularise AnonTex’s default loans

Bangladesh Bank has allowed Janata Bank to regularise default loans of scam-hit AnonTex Group, relaxing its own rescheduling policy.

As per the central bank policy, a defaulter has to pay down payment between 10 per cent and 50 per cent of default loans to reschedule nonperforming loans.

Ignoring its own rules, the BB gave a no-objection certificate to Janata Bank on Tuesday, which paved the way for the state lender to reschedule default loans around Tk 4,000 crore owned by the group.

The group will pay only Tk 86 crore, which is much lower than actual requirement in line with the central bank policy.

AnonTex, set up in 2004, rescheduled its NPLs amounting to Tk 2,800 crore in 2019. Its total loans with the bank stand at around Tk 6,000 crore.

The loans given to AnonTex were disbursed between 2010 and 2015 from the state lender's Janata Bhaban Corporate branch violating banking norms.

The loans accounted for more than 25 per cent of the lender's capital base, a violation of the single borrower exposure limit set in the Bank Company Act 1991.

The group subsequently became a defaulter and turned into a financial woe for the lender.

A central bank official said that the BB should have not allowed Janata Bank to reschedule the default loan of AnnonTex by relaxing its own rule as it had given a wrong signal to the financial sector.

Allowing AnnoTex to reschedule the default loans will encourage many delinquent borrowers not to repay banks' money in time, he said.

The central bank should follow its own rules and regulations strongly in order to restore the corporate governance in the banking sector, he said.