Laundering country's money he accumulated wealth in Dubai!
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Photo: Collected
Obaidul Karim, the owner of Orion Group, has built a mountain of wealth in Dubai by stealing the country's money. He trapped the Dubai contracting company Belhasa and amassed billions of taka through various misdeeds including fraud, deception, and embezzlement. He then laundered that money to Dubai himself. With the laundered money, he bought luxury hotels, flats, houses, and land in the posh areas of Dubai.
It is learned that none of the assets in Obaidul Karim's name in Dubai were purchased using his Bangladeshi passport. In the registration documents for buying a four-star hotel in Dubai, he identified himself as an Albanian citizen. In the documents of the Albanian corporate registry, the name of a company owned by him, Agri Products Europe, is mentioned which was established in the Albanian capital Tirana on November 11, 2013. Albania granted him citizenship through the Golden Passport Scheme against investment until 2023. The Cypriot government granted him citizenship under an investment program. In this case, he had to invest 200,000 euros or about 250,000 dollars in the Cyprus government's research and land development fund and about 2 million euros or about 2.5 million dollars in real estate in Cyprus.
Meanwhile, Orion Pharma Limited had a 30 percent stake in a pharmaceutical company in Bahrain. Obaidul Karim and his son Salman were on the board of directors of this company. However, although his son is mentioned as Bangladeshi, Obaidul Karim is mentioned as an Indian citizen. The company was established on January 6, 2015.
Obaidul Karim's daughter, Zarine Karim, owns the United Arab Emirates-based company Jesha General Trading LLC, where she is mentioned as a citizen of the Dominican Republic.
Obaidul Karim and his wife Arjuda Karim have Dominican passports. The passport was issued by that country on November 14, 2022. Their daughter, Zareen Karim, was appointed as the Honorary Consul of Dominica to Bangladesh in 2024 and still holds this position. Zareen Karim also invested 200,000 dollars in the real estate sector of the Dominican Republic to obtain citizenship.
Meanwhile, Obaidul Karim owns a 49 percent stake in the four-star hotel in Dubai called ‘Palette Royal Reflection Hotel and Spa’. Built in 2014, this 100-room hotel is located in Dubai’s elite area of Bar Dubai. Obaidul Karim, his wife Arjuda Karim and daughter Zareen own two houses and a three-bedroom flat in Dubai’s Al Merkadh and World Trade Center Residences. In total, Obaidul Karim and his family members have immovable assets worth Tk. 700 crore in Dubai. In addition, they have movable assets worth about Tk. 300 crore including luxury cars.
Obaidul Karim obtained the entire amount of thousand crores of taka smuggled from Bangladesh to build a huge property in Dubai through fraud, forgery and embezzlement.
During the construction of the 41-storey City Center in Motijheel, Dhaka, he forged the signature of Majed Ahmed, the managing director of the lead company Belhasa Group, and embezzled it by taking a loan of at least Tk. 176 crores from a bank in three phases. Although Obaidul Karim took the loan through fraud, Belhasa's name appeared on the list of defaulters. However, no one in Belhasa knew that Obaidul Karim had taken this huge loan in the name of their company. Even without taking the loan, Belhasa fell into Obaidul Karim's clutches and was listed as a defaulter. Although Belhasa Engineering and Contracting Company had 60 percent shares in that City Center, Obaidul Karim alone secretly sold 22 floors and embezzled about Tk. 450 crore and smuggled it abroad without the knowledge of the shareholders.
In addition, during the construction of the Jatrabari-Gulistan flyover, the company memorandum of Belhasa Ekom & Associates Limited, a joint venture of Orion and Belhasa, was forged as the builder. Here, Belhasa's representative was secretly excluded from the company memorandum through complete fraud. In this incident, Zubair Ahmed Bhuiyan, the authorized representative of Belhasa Engineering and Contracting Company's Managing Director Majed Ahmed, filed a case in the Fourth Joint District Judge's Court of Dhaka. The case alleged that Obaidul Karim forged signatures and formed a new company by excluding Belhasa's representative through forgery. In addition to Obaidul, his son Salman Karim and son-in-law Mehedi Hasan were made accused in the case. The then mayor of Dhaka City Corporation, registrar of joint stock companies, chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission and secretary of the Dhaka Stock Exchange were made counter-defendants. It is also alleged that Obaidul Karim embezzled Tk. 500 crore invested by Belhasa.
It is alleged that Obaidul Karim smuggled all the embezzled money abroad through corruption and incompetence.
Courtesy: Khabar Kagoj
