Kazi Zafarullah

Kazi Zafarullah (born April 1947) is a Bangladeshi industrialist and politician, a presidium member of the Awami League and a former member of parliament for Faridpur-5. A member of the Kazi family of Tungipara in Gopalganj, he is the husband of the MP and banker Nilufer Zafar and the elder brother of the academic administrator Kazi Shahidullah. ¹

Zafarullah was born in April 1947, the eldest son of Kazi Mahbubullah and Begum Zebunnessa. He was educated at St. Gregory's High School and Dhaka College, and took bachelor's and master's degrees in history from the University of Dhaka. ¹

Zafarullah was elected to parliament from Faridpur-5 and rose to the twelve-member presidium, the Awami League's central executive body. He was critically injured in the grenade attack of 21 August 2004 on a rally of the party leader, Sheikh Hasina. During the military-backed state of emergency he was arrested in April 2007, held on extortion and other cases, and repeatedly bailed and re-arrested before his release in January 2008. The Anti-Corruption Commission charged him in September 2008 with holding wealth beyond his known income, then cleared him, his wife and his sons of the charges in February 2009. He lost his seat in 2014 to the independent candidate Nixon Chowdhury, and lost again to the same opponent in 2018 in Faridpur-4, despite campaigning by Sheikh Hasina on his behalf. In 2013 reporting described a network of offshore companies in the British Virgin Islands set up by his family in 2006–08, and he and his wife were named in the Panama Papers leak of 2016. ¹

His wife, Nilufer Zafar, is a member of parliament and chairman of Midland Bank. His younger brother Kazi Ekramullah, an industrialist and Midland Bank director, died in 2022. ¹

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