Sirajganjshop allegedly scammed Tk47C from Nagad in 2 days

SirajganjShop, one of the most controversial e-commerce platforms, has allegedly embezzled Tk47.43 crore from the mobile financial service (MFS) provider Nagad.

A case was filed in this regard with the Banani Police Station last month on September 13. 

Touhidul Islam Chowdhury, Nagad's senior legal executive, filed the case against Jewel Rana, the owner of the online platform. 

Noor-e-Azam, officer-in-charge of Banani police, confirmed the matter to Dhaka Tribune.

"We are conducting a drive to find Jewel Rana and the people involved in embezzling money will be found and brought under the law,” he said. 

According to the case file, the e-commerce platform has scammed the MFS provider through a large number of customer refund requests in just two days, between August 30 and 31. 

Nagad had even suspended a considerable number of its users’ accounts, citing fraudulent activity. 

The suspended accounts were mostly found to have been involved in getting refunds from e-commerce platforms, such as that of sirajganjshop.com.

“Most of the money went to a few accounts in Sirajganjshop that turned out to be relatives of Jewel,” Zahidul Islam PRO of Nagad told Dhaka Tribune. 

He also said: “The owner of Sirajganjshop had visited our offices earlier following the suspension of several Nagad accounts that belonged to the consumers of the platform.”

“He had even admitted that due to some technical problems on their end, consumers were refunded more than the amount they were supposed to get, some even getting refunds twice. Jewel even verbally agreed to bear any loss so that consumers do not suffer and had written us a check of that amount,” he added. 

The CEO of sirajganjshop.com, had also gone live on Facebook during the period stating exactly that. 

However, Jewel's elder brother Anwar Hossain had claimed that the platform’s money had been stuck with Nagad. 

Earlier, the Commerce Ministry had sent a letter to Bangladesh Bank, seeking information on the latest financial situation of several e-commerce companies, including that of sirajganjshop.com.

The other companies are Aleshamart, Dhamaka, E-orange, Sirajganj Shop, Aladiner Prodip, Qcoom, BoomBoom, Adyan Mart, and Need.com.bd.

In the letter, the ministry sought information on the total liabilities of the companies to the buyers and merchants and the amount of current and fixed capital of the companies.

It also sought to know whether the companies had embezzled money.

On September 12, Nagad CEO Raheel Ahmed informed Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit about the unusual increase in the number of refund requests from two companies - SirajganjShop and Aladdiner Pradeep. 

In addition to identifying this issue, the status of 18,000 accounts related to the refund requests was automatically suspended.