Some vested groups embezzled money of Tk hundreds of crore of the customers by cheating in the name of e-commerce business and not even refunding their money. Rather, the suspected fraudsters in this field are geting released from the prison by availing bail and resuming their cheating activities.
This information also revealed from the sources in ministry of commerce. The authorities concerned said though evaly chairman got out of prison on bail, it didn’t restart their former server. Hence, the government couldn’t able to take any action for returning money of millions of customers. At the same time, the e-commerce companies who began to return money to their customers also halted the process after top officials got out on bail. For this kind of allegation, the Ministry of Commerce called on chief executive officer of e-commerce platform Qcoom and its hearing will be held on November 30.
WTO cell director general of ministry of commerce and chief of central digital commerce cell Md Hafizur Rahman told The Bangladesh Pratidin, “Among the e-commerce platforms in Bangladesh, Qcoom is in top in terms of the percentage of returning money to the customers. However, Its activities of returning money is paused after its CEO got out on bail. They didn’t return the money to the victim customers in spite of asking them several times to do it. As the list is not available, it hasn’t been possible to return the money of the customers’ stuck in escrow service.”
According to sources, the ministry of commerce took initiative to return money of 13 e-commerce companies including Qcoom, Alesha Mart, but the victim customers of e-commerce giant evaly didn’t get back any money. Even, it didn’t give any assurance of returning money after they resumed their commercial activities upon chairman Shamima Nasrin’s coming out of prison on bail.
About refunding money to the victim customers, in a recent press conference Shamima said, “Of course we have plan of refunding money. For this, we’ve to re-open our server and communicate with Amazon. However, we couldn’t do it as our managing director Mohammed Russel is still in prison.”
The amount of money refunded to the customers: According to the information of central e-commerce cell on November 28, so far 34, 637 customers of 13 companies got refunded Tk 302 crore 21 lakh. The customers of 13 companies including Qcoom, Alesha Mart, Dalalplus, BoomBoom, Anandabazar, Thaley Dotcom and Dhamaka got the stated amount of money. However, no part of this money had come from their official accounts. Only the money that has been stuck in third party payment gateway companies is returned to the customers.
According to sources, after issuing e-commerce rules and regulations on June 30, 2021, money is returning to those customers who made payment for buying products, but their paid money stuck in third party payment gateway instead of remaining in the account of the e-comerce companies. Any amount of money that already sent to the account of e-commerce companies hasn’t been refunded to the customers.
According to the information of the ministry of commerce, the customers of Alesha Mart sent Tk 2001 crore 28 lakh to the company’s account. The company had withdrawn Tk 1,999 crore through 56 accounts in various banks. However, the amount of money returned to the customers hadn’t been entered in the accounts of Alesha Mart.
According to sources, the money refunding procedure of victim customers of Qcoom started earlier. The victim customers got back money of Tk 239 till Monday. However, not a single amount has been spent by Qcoom; rather the whole amount has been paid from the account of escrow service provider Foster. In addition, the CEO of Qcoom is making undue late in providing the list of victim customers after he got out of prison on bail. As a result, it’s becoming tough to make payment through foster, too. Moreover, the ministry of commerce received complaints against the officials of Qcoom about selling customers’ products illegally after they got out of prison on bail. The ministry has decided to inspect the go-down physically to investigate the matter.
Regarding the matter, the head of central digital commerce cell said the police had taken control of the go-down after arresting the officials in charge of fraudulence. The officials retook the control after they got out on bail. Now, they’ll inspect the go-down again and take further step if any inconsistency is visible in the stock of goods.
However, Qcoom ECO Ripon Miah denied the allegation of doing undue late in refunding customers money. When the reporter on Sunday asked him about it, he said they’re providing lists of customers to ministry of commerce every month. They’ve refunded money of Tk 248 crore and 20 crore more would be refunded to the victim customers.
Besides, the goods of the customers have been kept intact in the go-down, he said.
@The report was published on print and online versions of The Bangladesh Pratidin on November 29, 2022 and rewritten in English by Lutful Hoque
