Bangladesh's army-backed interim government formally charged former prime minister Sheikh Hasina for graft in a case involving the Canadian oil exploration firm Niko Resources Ltd, officials said on Wednesday. On Monday, authorities brought similar charges against another prime minister, Begum Khaleda Zia, for her dealings with the Canadian firm during her term in office. “Both the former prime ministers along with their cohorts will be tried separately,” an Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) official told reporters. The anti-corruption body said Hasina's government permitted the oil firm to operate in the country without transparent deeds, and caused losses worth millions of dollars. It said Khaleda's subsequent government did not address the issue of lack of transparency in the deal and also failed to recover millions of dollars in compensation for environmental damage caused by fire at a drilling site in northeastern Bangladesh in 2005. Niko representatives in Dhaka were not immediately available for comment. In December a company official told Reuters that the firm had not operated unethically in Bangladesh. The official also said the firm had not been contacted by the Bangladesh authorities after the charges were laid. The trials will start soon. Khaleda's son faces charges Bangladesh's anti-corruption watchdog said Wednesday it has charged an ex-prime minister's son and a former Cabinet minister with accepting a $3 million bribe to halt a murder probe. The charges against ex-prime minister Khaleda Zia's son, Tarique Rahman, and former Home Minister Lutfozzaman Babar were filed Tuesday at a magistrate's court in Dhaka, Anti-Corruption Commission official Rupak Kumar Saha said. The two allegedly accepted the bribe from a businessman in exchange for stopping an investigation into the 2007 murder of his colleague in which he was the prime suspect, Saha said. The murder was never solved. Saha said the court will now examine the charges to decide if the two will stand trial. Rahman and Babar are already in jail facing several other corruption charges.
