The Criminal Court has sentenced Hassan Waheed, a former deputy country manager at Bank of Ceylon, for forgery and theft in a 2019 case in which USD 150,000 was taken from a customer's account.
The court found both charges proven beyond reasonable doubt on Thursday. He had created a fraudulent transfer request. The same customer had separately lost another USD 110,000 from the account in a suspicious incident.
He received six months for forgery and two years, nine months and 11 days for theft. The court cited the evidence and his lack of good-faith effort to repay the money. But the case was filed in 2019 and not heard until 2024, so the judge reduced the sentence by two degrees for breaching his right to a speedy trial. Two years of it were converted to a fine, which the state did not oppose.
