Rana Plaza owner sentenced to three years in prison

This Tuesday, the Justice Minister of Bangladesh sentenced the owner of the Rana Plaza, where one of the worst industrial accidents in history took place in 2013, to three years in prison for corruption, the prosecutor told AFP.

This procedure is separate to the prosecution for murder directly linked to the garment factory’s collapse, which killed more than 1,300 people in the suburbs of Dhaka, which constitutes the main focus of the judiciary response to the catastrophe that shocked the planet.

Accused of not having declared his personal wealth to an anti-corruption commission, Sohel Rana was given the maximum punishment for his charge on Tuesday.

“This is the first time he has been sentenced and imprisoned [since the tragedy]," prosecutor Salahuddin Eskander told AFP.

Sohel Rana and the other 37 other co-defendants in the Rana Plaza case will face the death penalty if they are found guilty of murder. The date for the highly awaited trial has not yet been fixed.

The suspects are accused of having lied about the building’s security. Thousands of workers were forced to enter the building to carry out their work, even though some of them had expressed concerns about cracks appearing on the structure. Becoming the number-one public enemy in Bangladesh overnight, Sohel Rana was arrested several days after the tragedy at the Indian border.

The drama of April 24, 2013, brought to light the grim reality of the sub-contracting carried out by big Western brands as a consequence of the race to reduce production costs in a globalised economy.