Evaly customers get back only Tk 1.45 lakh so far
Although Evaly owes Tk 400 crore to Tk 1,000 crore to its thousands of customers and merchants, only 14 clients have got back Tk 1.45 lakh after a refund process began last month, commerce ministry officials said.
Thanks to the refund process, customers of the controversial e-commerce platform are set to get Tk 2 crore out of the Tk 25.85 crore stuck with three gateways since 2021.
The Tk 2 crore was paid by Evaly customers through the payment gateways on September 14, 15 and 16 September of 2021, and the fund has been stuck with the gateways after the introduction of an escrow system, said Md Sayed Ali, deputy secretary at the Central Digital Commerce Cell of the commerce ministry.
"Evaly has sent a list of the customers to the gateways through the commerce ministry so that the refund can be made."
According to the ministry, of the Tk 25.85 crore, Tk 17.69 crore is stuck with Nagad, Tk 4. 91 crore with bKash, and Tk 3.40 crore with SSLCOMMERZ.
Since July 1, 2021, the gateways have been keeping the payments in the escrow accounts as per a directive of the Bangladesh Bank. Escrow is the use of a third party, which holds the funds until buyers and sellers fulfil their contractual requirements.
A five-member board appointed by the High Court in October 2021 to run Evaly hired an auditor. The auditor submitted a report last year but it couldn't determine the exact debt owing to the absence of documentation.
The audit report, however, said Evaly's creditors are unlikely to get their money back as there is no documentation at the e-commerce platform's end, making it difficult to verify who is owed how much.
The auditor found Evaly made more than Tk 6,000 crore transactions with "very poor, unreliable, unorganised, incomplete books and records".
Neither the list of customers who paid advances to the company nor the list of merchants that supplied products to it could be obtained.
Evaly began its journey in 2018 with a paid-up capital of Tk 1 crore. On the back of lucrative discounts ranging from 50 per cent to over 100 per cent, it was able to attract about 50 lakh customers within two years and a half.
Amid the legions of complaints, a Bangladesh Bank audit in April 2021 found that Evaly's liability is much bigger than its assets.
In September 2021, Evaly founder and Managing Director Mohammad Rassel and his wife and Evaly Chairman Shamima Nasrin were arrested following cases filed by some customers who didn't get either refunds or products.
Nasrin served six months in jail before being allowed to walk out on bail.
In October last year, Nasrin said her company informed the commerce ministry that its debt was about Tk 400 crore and it would take some time to get the full picture of the debt.
Commerce ministry officials said Evaly hasn't submitted any comprehensive report on its total debts.
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