Bangladesh Bank’s (BB) inspection team has found gross violation of banking rules by the NRB Commercial (NRBC) Bank Ltd., with its Chairman Pervez Tamal and Managing Director Golam Awlia at the helm of all these irregularities, official sources said.
According to the inspection report, the bank’s MD & CEO signed an outsourcing agreement with NRBC Management Ltd. to hire guards, peons and contractual employees from the company for two years. The service agreement was signed without floating any tender, as required by Chapter 3 of BB’s Procurement & Expenditure Management Policy.
Nine of the 16 directors of the NRBC Management Ltd., not a subsidiary or associate company of the bank, are also the directors of the NRBC Bank. BB rules also prohibit the involvement of directors in the recruitment or promotion of bank employees. But as nine of the directors of the company are bank directors, they got involved in its recruitment process through the company violating BB rules.
The report said the agreement is clearly a violation of related BB circular and has created conflict of interest. It is also an indication of grave situation in banking sector discipline, it added. The BB inspection also found the bank spending Tk 30,000 per person in each board meeting, which is unwanted. The BRPD circular 11/2015 set the ceiling of honourarium for directors Tk 8,000 per person. But the bank paid Tk 9,200, including VAT, to each director in the bank’s board meetings.
According to the decision of the 63rd and 66th board meeting held in 2018, Lieutenant Commander (Retd) Farhad Sarkar and Major (Retd) Md. Parvez Hossain and another retired army officer were appointed as vice presidents (VP) of the bank. Among them, Farhad Sarkar and Parvez Hossain are currently serving as senior vice presidents (SVP). The bank’s human resource policy requires 13 years of banking experience for appointment to these posts.
The inspection report said there is no scope for setting up a separate management company by individuals or groups using the name of the bank. However, most of the members of the bank’s board of directors have formed a different company called NRBC Management Limited. Apart from this, NRBC Management Limited is also not shown as a subsidiary of NRBC Bank. NRBC management is directly involved in the appointment and promotions, which has no legal basis.
Asked, Golam Awlia told The News Times that some problems have been found in BB’s inspection team. “We have solved most of them. The rest will be resolved very quickly.” He said an internal audit is also done by the bank.
