DHAKA, Nov. 17 (nsnewswire) — A Dhaka court has acquitted the country’s main opposition party’s deputy chief Tarique Rahman of a money laundering case.

   But Judge Md Motahar Hossain of the Special Judge’s Court-3 awarded his close business associate Giasuddin Al Mamun seven-year jail in the  money laundering case involving about 204.1 million taka.

   The court also fined 400 million taka for Mamun, who remains behind the bar since March 26, 2007.

  Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) filed the case against Rahman,  senior vice chairman of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) ,  and Mamun on Oct. 26, 2009, on charge of siphoning off  204.1 million taka to Singapore between 2003 and 2007.

   According to the case statement, Mamun took 204.1 million as bribes from a local construction company and allegedly deposited the money in a Singapore bank, from where Rahman,  ex- Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s eldest son,withdrew some money.

   The chief prosecutor of the ACC, Anisul Haq, refrained from making any comment about the verdict. But he said, ” We’ll appeal against it.”

  In May this year the court issued the warrant of arrest, saying it would ask the Interpol to help detain Rahman, also a senior vice chairman of Khaleda’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) as he has been living in London.

  Rahman was arrested on March 7, 2007 on charges of corruption during the 2007-2008 military-controlled caretaker government.

  He went to London after his release on bail in September 2008 for ” treatment” reportedly on condition of not participating at any political activities during his stay there.

  Khalea, chairperson of the BNP, had earlier said political vendettas are to blame in both her sons’ prosecutions during Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s incumbent government.

  Earlier Khaleda’s youngest son, Arafat Rahman, now in Thailand, was sentenced for six years on a corruption and money laundering charge.

   Since the end of her tenure in 2006, her eldest son Rahman faced 14 cases on charges of corruption, extortion and grenade attacks.