The High Court on Thursday declared illegal reopening of inquiry into the alleged corruption of 14 people, who were exempted by now defunct Truth and Accountability Commission in 2008. 
The court gave the verdict after final hearing of the writ petitions of 14 people challenging the legality of the notices the Anti Corruption Commission served on them in 2011 asking them to appear before it to give fresh statements about their wealth acquisition allegedly through corrupt means, pending since 2008.
A bench of Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury and Justice Jahangir Hossain gave the verdict.
The petitioners’ lawyers submitted that the ACC issued the notices to their clients in violation of schedule 7(5) of the Anti-Corruption Commission Rules 2007 which requires completion of inquiry into such allegations in 30 days. 
If the inquiry of a complaint is not completed within the stipulated time, it will be considered to be closed under the rule, submitted advocate Rokanuddin Mahmud.
Rokanuddin appeared for Emon Shahriar, one of the petitioners.
Emon submitted his wealth statement to the ACC on July 2, 2008 in compliance to a notice it served him on June 12, 2008 in which it said it had reasons to believed that he owned properties beyond his known sources of earnings,
After a gap of four years, on October 28, 2011 ACC served Emon another notice asking him to appear before it to give a fresh statement about his alleged corruption the ACC said nit had found on the basis of his 2008 wealth statement, submitted his lawyer.
How the matter could be reopened after four years when many developments took place since notice was first issued, submitted Rokan.
Rokan said that his client was exempted from the corruption charge by the Truth and Accountability Commission on December 31, 2008 after he surrendered the ill-gotten following voluntary confession to corruption.
ACC lawyer Khurshid Alam Khan submitted that the ACC could not proceed with the inquiry against the petitioners as the legality of TAC was challenged in the High Court Division which on November 13, 2008 declared TAC proceedings of 2008 illegal.
That’s why, advocate Khurshid submitted that the ACC reopened the proceedings against TAC clemency seekers as, later, on May 16, 2011, the Appellate Division also upheld the High Court Division’s verdict.
Accordingly, he submitted, the ACC started taking legal action against 448 people, who voluntarily confessed their corruption to the Truth and Accountability Commission.
 On August 3, 2008, the military backed emergency caretaker government made the Voluntary Disclosure of Information Ordinance-2008 under which the Truth and Accountability Commission was created for voluntary disclosure of corruption.