Beximco Group: Appellate Division upholds HC decision of appointing receiver to maintain assets

A chamber Court of the Appellate Division has upheld the High Court's order of appointing a receiver to maintain all assets of the Beximco Group.

Chamber Judge of the Appellate Division Md Rezaul Haque gave the order on Tuesday (1 October) after hearing on the application of Beximco Group seeking suspension of the order of the High Court.

At the same time, the court has fixed 28 October as the date for hearing by the full bench of the Appellate Division in this regard.

The High Court on 19 September directed the Bangladesh Bank to appoint a receiver to conduct the functions of the Beximco Group of Companies and attach all its assets.

A receiver, in legal terms, is an independent and impartial person appointed as a custodian of a person or entity's property, finances, general assets, or business operations. Receivers can be appointed by courts, government regulators, or private entities.

Beximco Group scams

Beximco Group Vice Chairman Salman F Rahman is under investigation over various allegations, including smuggling Tk36,000cr abroad by taking loans from banks, embezzlement, illegally amassing wealth, share market fraud, and others.

Salman has been a widely identified man behind the stock market scams in 1996 and 2010.

Using courts during Awami League tenures, he suppressed any action against him based on investigators' findings. And the impunity just kept fuelling his hunger for bigger scams through bank loans and the capital market.

Later in 2020-21, he paid debenture investors back and came up with several hundred times bigger schemes in forms of Beximco Green Sukuk worth Tk3,000 crore that was forcefully sold to banks or a Tk1,000 crore zero coupon bond by a greenfield real estate firm last year that was sold to individuals in a misleading way while he transferred the default risks to IFIC Bank under his control then.

His attempt to collect further Tk1,500 crore through another Beximco bond earlier this year was not fully successful due to the political regime change.

He was cleared through the high court in the mid-2010s from the 1996 stock market scam charges. Also the Khondokar Ibrahim Khaled report mentioned him as one of the key manipulators responsible for the 2010 scam and asked the government, regulators to remain careful about him.

Sheikh Hasina did not lend an ear, instead making him the most powerful man in the economic administration in 2019.

During the pandemic, Beximco Limited showed unbelievable profits and its shares surged to nearly Tk200 from Tk14 in three years. Salman's intimidating phone calls for not selling Beximco shares during the rally and forcing state owned banks to buy at high prices were the talk of the town in 2022.

Besides, Salman and his associates were behind manipulating many other stocks in the past five years, according to market people.

How much he amassed from the stock market scams is yet to be learned. It is believed to be worth thousands of crore.