Court orders Jatiya Party vice chairman to repay Tk184 crore loan

A Chattogram court has ordered Jatiya Party Vice-Chairman Morshed Murad Ibrahim and his wife Mahjabeen Morshed to pay Tk184 crore within two months in a loan scam case filed by Basic Bank.

Judge Mujahidur Rahman of the Chattogram Money Loan Court passed the order on Wednesday. Crystal Group, where Murad is the chief, owes nearly Tk800 crore to different banks in the country. Three different organsitaions of the group together owe Tk446 crore to different branches of Basic Bank for over ten years. Defying repeated orders to appear before the Chattogram Money Loan Court, Morshed Murad is currently residing in Ivory Coast and his wife is in London.

As per Basic Bank authorities, IG Navigation, where Mahjabeen Morshed is the managing director, took loan from the bank's Agrabad branch in Chattogram city in 2010 for importing ships. As the company failed to repay the loan in over a decade, the bank filed a case in 2021 against it.

Along with Mahjabeen Morshed, the four defendants of the case are her husband Morshed Murad as well as IG Navigations Directors Humaira Karim and Muzaffar Hossain.

The money loan court's Bench Assistant Rezaul Karim said after Basic Bank filed the case the court asked the defendants to submit their passports and appear before the court. However, as they failed to comply, the court passed the unilateral verdict requiring the accused to pay Tk184 crore.

IG Navigations Ltd is a concern of Chattogram-based Crystal Group. Crystal Steel and Shipbreaking, another company under the conglomerate, took Tk135 crore loan from Basic Bank's Agrabad branch in 2010, and has not repaid the sum as yet.

Bay Navigation, an entity under the same group, borrowed money from Basic Bank's Dilkusha branch in the capital in 2012. Bay Navigation now owes Tk127 crore to the bank's Dilkusha branch.

MRF Trade of Crystal Group has also borrowed Tk70 crore from the bank's Jubilee Road branch in the port city.

Faisal Shah Qureshi, former managing director of Basic Bank's Agrabad branch, told TBS that the branch alone is due for Tk320 crore from different Crystal Group entities. Morshed Murad and his wife Mahjabeen, a former lawmaker from Jatiya Party, used political influence to procure the loans.

Mahjabeen became a lawmaker from a reserved seat in 2019. Since then, Morshed Murad and his family members assumed positions as directors in different banks and insurance companies including Padma Bank (former Farmers Bank) and NRB Commercial Bank. It has been alleged that they secured large amount of loans with relative ease but most often spent them on personal luxuries.