B'desh HC orders seizure of Canadian firm's assets

Bangladesh's High Court today scrapped two deals signed by a Canadian oil company with two state-run entities during former premier Khaleda Zia's regime and ordered confiscation of its assets until disposal of the pending graft cases against it.
"The (HC) bench ordered confiscation of (Canadian) Niko assets in Bangladesh in favour of the state," a spokesman of the attorney general's office told newsmen.
He said the two-judge bench simultaneously declared null and void the deals signed by Niko with the state-run Petrobangla and Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Limited (BAPEX).
The bench comprising judges Naima Haider and Saifur Rahman delivered the judgment following a writ petition filed by the legal affairs adviser of Consumers Association of Bangladesh (CAB).

NIKO sealed the first deal, a joint venture agreement, with BAPEX in 2003 and the other on gas purchase and sales with Petrobangla three years later when Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led government was in power.
The verdict came five months after the apex Appellate Division of the Supreme Court cleared the way for a lower court to resume the trial proceedings against Zia in Niko corruption case rejecting her plea to nullify the charges.
Former law minister Moudud Ahmed, former state minister for energy AKM Mosharraf Hossain, former energy secretary Khandaker Shahidul Islam and Vice-President (South Asia) of Niko Resources Bangladesh Ltd Kashem Sharif were also charged in the case.