HC justifies ACC law for wealth statement, case filing

The High Court today justified the legal provisions that allow the Anti-Corruption Commission to seek wealth statement from graft suspects and to move cases against them.

The justification was given when the court rejected a writ petition, filed by three corruption accused, challenging the legality of those provisions of the ACC.

The bench of Justice Zinat and Jsutice KM Kamrul Kader passed the order.

ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan told The Daily Star there is no legal bar to the commission to seek wealth statement from graft suspects and to move cases against them for amassing illegal wealth.

Delwar Hossain, the then customs inspector of Armanitola circle in Dhaka, his wife Ferdaus Ara Begum and their son Monjur Morshed, accused of a corruption case, filed the writ petition with the HC in 2011 challenging the legality of Sections 26 and 27 of the ACC law that permit the commission to issue a notice seeking wealth statement from corruption suspects and to move cases against them for amassing illegal wealth.

The HC the same year issued a rule asking the government and the ACC to explain as to why the sections of the law should not be declared illegal and stayed the case proceedings against them.

Yesterday, the HC vacated its stay order and asked the lower court concerned to finish the trial proceedings of the case against the petitioners in eight months, he added.