Dhaka, Nov 30: Bangladesh’s former premier and key-opposition party outside parliament BNP chief Khaleda Zia was today granted bail after she surrendered before a court here over a nearly USD 2 billion graft case dating back to 2007 when she exhausted all legal options to evade the trial.
70-year-old Zia was forced to surrender in line with a Supreme Court decision which had rejected her plea to quash the corruption case over contracting out a major gas field to Canada’s Niko Resources allegedly in exchange of kickbacks during her 2001-2006 tenure, causing a loss of Taka 137 billion (USD 1.78 billion) to the state exchequer.
