One is Nafiz Sarafat, who is the chairman of Res Asset Management. By manipulating the share price of many companies through irregularities and corruption, the common investors have lost crores of money. The preliminary investigation of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the police revealed these details of his misdeeds.
CID Deputy Inspector General (Organized Crime) Kusum Dewan said that the investigation has already started and soon a case will be filed under the Money Laundering Act.
An alliance led by former Padma Bank Chairman Nafiz Sarafat, his wife Anjuman Ara Shahid and Race Managing Director Hasan Taher Imam was involved in organized financial crime. These include money laundering, money laundering, fraud and over invoicing.
In 2008, Sarafat and Imam took the license of Race Management PCL. The asset management company created quite a stir among capital market stakeholders through various workshops at that time.By 2013, Race managed 10 mutual funds.
According to CID findings, sports commentator Chowdhury Zafarullah Sarafat’s younger brother Nafiz Sarafat, Nafiz’s wife Anjuman Ara and Taher Imam invested money from the fund and bought shares in the then Farmers Bank (now Padma Bank) and became directors of the bank.
However, mutual funds did not benefit from this investment in banks.
According to the CID report, the total size of the fund is about Tk 4,500 crore. FDRs (Fixed Deposit Receipts) are opened for a fixed period with fund money, but with the connivance of bank officials, they are canceled before expiry.’
As a result the investors of the fund have been deprived of profits worth crores of money.
Out of this, Tk 650 to 700 crore in Short Term Deposit (STD) and Special Notice Deposit (SND) accounts earn only 3-4 percent interest.
Again, about 2-3 percent of the interest money is embezzled with the connivance of bank officials, the report said.
Although there is a rule to distribute at least 75 percent of the profits from capital markets to investors, in most cases Race has misappropriated most of the funds without complying with this rule.
Canadian University of Bangladesh (CUB) Board of Trustees Chairman Nafiz Sarafat in connivance with the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission and the Investment Corporation of Bangladesh has extended the tenure of mutual funds by 10 years without returning the full amount to the investors.
On December 2, 2018, Rajuk allotted a plot of 171.16 katha to Canadian University of Bangladesh under the Purbachal New Town project. CID officials said that the government has suffered a loss of Tk 77 crore.
Apart from owning mutual funds, Sarafat is also the chairman of Argus Credit Rating Services.
CID’s financial crime unit inspector said. Moniruzzaman told the media, “We have already started collecting information about the financial irregularities of Nafiz Sarafat and his family members and associates.”
Incidentally, Chowdhury Nafiz Sarafat started his career in Standard Chartered Bank in 1999. While staying in a foreign bank, he suddenly became an independent director of the private IFIC Bank. He left the job of Standard Chartered Bank after the question of job in one bank and director in another.
He joined ICB Islamic Bank in 2008. Head of Consumer Banking. He used his identity as ‘MD, Consumer Banking, ICB Global Holdings’ on his visiting card.
Before that, Chowdhury Nafiz Sarafat got a mutual fund license from Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC). He first applied for the license in his own name. Since licenses are not issued in individual names, he later formed the company on the advice of BSEC member Mohammad Ali Khan. The name of this company is Bangladesh Race Asset Management, in which he owns 25 percent. The rest is owned by another partner, Hasan Imam. Those who were working in BSEC since then have given these information, which Nafiz Sarafat also confirmed.
In just 13 years, Nafiz Sarafat became known as a mysterious but irresistible person in banks, capital markets, electricity, private universities, media and other sectors under state patronage. According to preliminary estimates by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), he owns thousands of crores of money.
