A former Bangladeshi minister was on Thursday convicted of corruption and jailed for 13 years by a special court set up to hear graft cases by the new emergency government, police said.
Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, a minister in the Awami League's 1996-2001 government, received 10 years for amassing a huge fortune through graft and three years for failing to supply information on his financial affairs, said police court officer Mahbub Alam.
Earlier, state media said another former minister from the rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and his UN expert wife had been charged with accepting a 342,000-dollar bribe as the government continued its crackdown on corruption.
Nazmul Huda, who was communications minister until last October, and his wife Sigma Huda, a UN people trafficking specialist, would go on trial later this week, the official BSS news agency said in a report.
On Wednesday, Huda was also charged with selling government land worth 1.1 million dollars for just 72 dollars to a human rights organisation owned by himself and his wife.
The couple are among more than 150 prominent people including former prime minister Sheikh Hasina detained as part of the government's campaign to clean up Bangladeshi politics. Other high-profile detainees include the influential elder son of the country's most recent elected prime minister Khaleda Zia and a string of other former ministers.