Dhaka - Bangladesh's leading anti-graft watchdog has cleared Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed and three others of another graft charge, saying there was no misuse of office by the accused, media reports said Monday. The allegation of misusing office to approve a project flouting the rules could not be proved, a deputy director of the Anti-Corruption Commission, Mohammad Moniruzzaman, said in a report submitted to the lower court Sunday, the Daily Star reported.
The investigator appealed to the court to clear Hasina and the others of the charge.
During her 1996-2001 tenure, the premier took up a project to construct a complex at the grave of her slain father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, also the founder of the country, at a cost of over 7,100 US dollars.
But in 2004, her successor Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party-led alliance government charged Hasina, one of her cabinet colleagues, a government official and the chairman of the construction firm with embezzling funds.
After returning to office in January this year, Hasina's Awami League-led alliance government withdrew charges which had been filed against her and 44 other alliance leaders relating to the deaths of six people in street violence during the October 2006 political changeover.
It also lifted an extortion lawsuit against Hasina, her sister Sheikh Rehana and their cousin Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim in May.
The government had earlier decided to withdraw 12 other cases filed against Hasina during the seven years in office of the previous BNP-led four-party alliance government and the military-backed interim administration of Fakhruddin Ahmed.
