A Chattogram court has sentenced five former officials of Janata Bank to eight years in prison for embezzling Tk 33.9 million from the bank’s Sheikh Mujib Road corporate branch. Each convict was also fined Tk 4.6 million, with an additional one-year jail term in case of non-payment. The verdict was delivered on Sunday by Chattogram Divisional Special Judge Md. Mizanur Rahman.

The convicted officials are former branch officers Md. Abu Taiyeb, Babul Chandra Majumder, Ronendra Bikash Saha, Moslem Uddin, and former Senior Principal Officer of the bank’s head office Md. Saeed Hossain. Another accused, Nurul Huda, was acquitted, while proceedings against Abu Bakar Siddique remain suspended pending rule disposal. According to the Anti-Corruption Commission’s prosecutor, the charges were proven through testimony from 12 witnesses.

Case records show that between January 1999 and March 2000, several bank officials and clients illegally transferred funds from various accounts and withdrew the money through current and STD accounts. The case was filed on April 6, 2000, and after a lengthy investigation, the charge sheet was submitted in June 2011, with the trial beginning in March 2013.