S Alam's two sons, 8 others sued over Tk250cr pay order fraud
The accused include Saiful Alam’s sons Asadul Alam Mahir and Ashraful Alam, suspended senior vice president of First Security Islami Bank’s Khatunganj branch Md Helal Uddin, and former deputy tax commissioner Aminul Islam.
The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) has filed a case against two sons of Saiful Alam, chairman of S Alam Group, and eight other individuals, including bankers and a former tax official, for allegedly creating and using fake pay orders worth Tk250 crore to launder money and evade taxes.
ACC Assistant Director Md Nizam Uddin from the commission's Dhaka headquarters filed the case with ACC Chattogram Integrated Office-1 today (9 September), Deputy Director Shubel Ahmed of Chattogram Integrated Office-1 confirmed the matter to The Business Standard.
According to the case statement, the accused conspired to forge pay orders, manipulate account statements, and falsely claim tax payments under the scope of the government's 2020 tax amnesty provision for undisclosed assets.
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The accused include Saiful Alam's sons Asadul Alam Mahir and Ashraful Alam, suspended senior vice president of First Security Islami Bank's Khatunganj branch Md Helal Uddin, and former deputy tax commissioner Aminul Islam.
Several bank officials, including Md Ahsanul Haque from the ICT division of First Security Islami Bank, Mohammad Ruhul Amin, Shamima Akter, Md Anis Uddin, and Gazi Mohammad Yakub, were also named in the case.
Investigators found that the accused presented forged pay orders dated 29 June 2021 to show tax clearance under the amnesty scheme. However, account records revealed that the accounts were either opened months later or did not have sufficient balance on the claimed dates, according to the ACC.
In some instances, deposits were made months after the supposed transactions, but backdated entries were inserted into bank systems through IT manipulation.
For example, Asadul Alam Mahir allegedly showed a Tk25 crore pay order issued in June 2021, while his bank account was opened in December that year. Records also revealed that on 29 September 2021, Tk250 crore was deposited and withdrawn the same day, leaving a balance of less than Tk10,000. Similar fraudulent patterns were identified in accounts linked to Ashraful Alam.
The ACC alleged that the scheme was carried out in collusion with bank officials who certified forged documents as genuine, manipulated IT systems to alter transaction dates, and stamped pay order application forms without receiving actual cash deposits.
