Scam-hit BASIC Bank has dismissed four of its top officials on grounds of financial irregularities.

The troubled bank sent dismissal letters to the four officials yesterday, according to the bank. 

Of them, three are deputy managing directors and one general manager.

The DMDs are: Fazlus Sobhan and Md Ruhul Alam, who were posted in the bank's headquarters, and Md Salim, who was based in the regional recovery office in Chitta-gong. The dismissed general manager, Mahbubul Alam, was posted in the headquarters.

Sobhan had been the acting managing director of the bank for over six months after the central bank fired the bank's then managing director Kazi Faqurul Islam in May last year on charges of irregularities.

The bank is now going through reconstruction under a new board of directors led by Alauddin A Majid.

The four officials were involved in approving Tk 49.5 lakh by violating the bank's rules.

The money was meant to be spent to fight a legal battle filed last year by the bank's two aggrieved officials, who alleged that the state bank promoted Alam and Salim to the position of DMD unlawfully. The lawyers' bill was Tk 39.4 lakh, meaning the officials pocketed over Tk 10 lakh.

“As per the service rules of the bank, the board of directors has decided to take punitive measures (dismissal) against these officials,” said a letter sent to the dismissed officials.

The bank authority has sent another letter to the heads of all divisions at the headquarters and all branches across the country informing them of the four officials' dismissal. Earlier, Bangladesh Bank investigations detected massive financial irregularities involving around Tk 4,500 crore of loans in three branches of BASIC Bank between 2009 and 2013.

More than 50 percent of the loans have already become bad, throwing the bank into acute capital shortage.

Loan frauds, committed through direct involvement of the previous board headed by Sheikh Abdul Hye Bacchu and some of its top executives, took place in the Dilkusha, Gulshan and Shantinagar branches of the bank.

Of the fired DMDs, Sobhan and Alam were close aides of Bacchu. Alam was promoted to the post of DMD within one year of his joining the bank as a deputy general manager, BASIC Bank officials said.