Bangladesh's former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia and 12 others have been charged for violating laws governing trading and manufacturing companies in the country, officials said on Wednesday. A court asked all the accused, including Khaleda's detained elder son, Tareque Rahman, to appear before it on July 16.
They were directors of the Daily Dinkal Limited, publisher of the Dainik Dinkal newspaper, a mouthpiece of Khaleda's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).
Six of the charged people, including Tareque, Khaleda's heir apparent, and two of her former ministers have been in jail for months after being detained in an anti-corruption drive by the country's army-backed interim government.
The Joint Stock Company, a state-managed watchdog and regulator of private and public limited firms, filed a case for dodging their legal obligations at a court on Tuesday.
"The directors violated some pertinent laws as they did not hold annual general meetings and submit audit reports of the company since they took charge," a regulator official said. More than 170 senior leaders of the BNP and Bangladesh Awami League led by Khaleda's rival Sheikh Hasina have been held in the crackdown on corruption.
Police filed on Wednesday a new case against former prime minister Hasina for extorting some 50 million taka ($724,600). The authorities also barred Hasina on Wednesday from visiting survivors of rain-triggered mudslides that killed dozens of people in the south-east of the country, police said.
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