IANS/Dhaka

Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chairperson and former premier Khaleda Zia’s younger son Arafat Rahman Koko died of heart failure yesterday, the party confirmed.
Zia’s press secretary Maruf Kamal Khan told bdnews24.com that Koko, 45, died while he was being taken to a
hospital in Malaysia.
Koko, convicted in a money-laundering case, was staying abroad since 2008.
He was sentenced to six years in prison and fined 190mn taka (about $2.5mn) for laundering money to Singapore between 2004 and 2006, when his mother was prime minister.
Press wing official Shamsuddin Didar told reporters that Koko’s funeral would be held at Kuala Lumpur’s Masjid Negara on Sunday after Zuhr prayers.
Koko was arrested along with his mother on September 3, 2007 at their cantonment home during the emergency rule. He went to Thailand for treatment on July 19 next year after the military-run caretaker government released him on parole.
He moved from Bangkok to Malaysia. He stayed at a rented house in Kuala Lumpur with his wife and two daughters.
The Awami League-led coalition that came to power in 2009 decided against extending his parole further.
Koko defied court summons leading to his trial and conviction as a fugitive from justice - which meant he could not appeal against his sentence. But the BNP says the case aimed to settle political scores.
BNP’s senior vice chairman Tarique Rahman was also arrested in 2007 and slapped with a slew of corruption charges.
Later accused of trying to kill Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, he was also released by the 2007-8 caretaker regime on parole and has been staying in the UK since 2008 with his family.
Never the one for political showmanship, the youngest son of Bangladesh’s first military ruler Gen Ziaur Rahman and three-time prime minister Khaleda chose to play the second fiddle to his elder brother and their presumed political heir.
But in 2001, when his mother led an amalgamation of Jamaat-e-Islami and other parties to power, Koko, was surprisingly installed as an adviser to Bangladesh Cricket Board.
Allegations have it that Koko and his cohorts ‘occupied’ BCB shunting out an elected committee by forming an advisory panel.
He took the chair of the cricket board’s development committee removing then BCB chief Saber Hossain Chowdhury from his post.