Rezaul Karim
The Bangladesh Bank (BB) Sunday started its investigation into the suspected financial transactions and money laundering through the bank accounts of the Destiny Group and that of its directors, officials said.

The central bank formed four separate probe teams, each consisting of two members, on the same day to dig out the alleged illegal financial transactions by the MLM (multi-level marketing) company and its other concerns.

"The probe bodies have already started investigations to discover whether any money laundering or illegal transaction has taken place through the bank accounts of the Destiny Group or that of its directors," said a senior BB official.

The investigation teams will scrutinise financial dealings, especially the large-scale transactions, by Destiny Group, its subsidiary companies and their directors by way of their bank accounts.

The BB will submit the detailed findings of the investigation into the 'dealings' made by Destiny to the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) after its completion.

The tax authorities have detected dodging of over Tk 1.00 billion in tax and VAT by the two concerns of the Destiny Tree Plantation, after examining some bank accounts, according to NBR officials.

The BB has detected that the directors of Destiny Group transferred Tk 48.99 billion of the organisation to their personal bank accounts, according to the BB report, which was submitted recently to ACC, officials sources said.

BB last Thursday has frozen all kinds bank accounts of Destiny Group and its sister concerns and also that of the directors except the ones of Dainik Destiny and Boisakhi Media Limited.

Allegations of suspected monetary transactions and money laundering by its directors were made against Destiny 2000 Ltd, Destiny Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd (DMCSL) and its sister concerns.

Earlier, in order to investigate whether there had been any act of money laundering, the central bank had asked all banks to provide it with information about the accounts of the company's 14 directors, including its president and the chairman, and all sister concerns.

Last Wednesday, the NBR's Central Intelligence Cell (CIC) asked all banks to freeze the bank accounts owned and operated by all the directors of Destiny 2000 Ltd.