Sirajganjshop swindles Nagad’s Tk47 crore in just 2 days

Controversial e-commerce platform SirajganjShop has reportedly embezzled over Tk47.43 crore from Nagad, a mobile financial service of the Postal Department, in just two days through fraudulence.

Nagad's Senior Executive (legal wing) Touhidul Islam Chowdhury filed a case against Jewel Rana, owner of SirajganjShop, with Banani Police Station on 13 September.

According to the case statement, the e-commerce site embezzled the money through lots of refund requests to different customer accounts from 30-31 August.  

During the time, Nagad detected five unusual issues - abnormal number of refund requests at the same time; repeated refund requests of the same amount of money from the same account; refund request was sent against the purchase order for which the goods were already successfully delivered; request was made to return more money than the actual amount of the order and refund requests were made to return money late at night.

"Jewel Rana was served with a show-cause notice after the fraudulent incident was revealed. At the same time, a refund request was also sent. Later on 2 September, Jewel Rana sent a letter and since then he could not be reached."

After learning about the incident, Nagad stopped transactions of several thousand accounts. However, most of the money went to a few accounts in Sirajganjshop, which belong to Jewel Rana and his relative.

A senior public relations official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Prothom Alo that unusual refund requests from eight Nagad accounts were sent to shop owner Jewel Rana and his relatives. Currently, transactions through these accounts are suspended.

Nagad Chief Public Relations Officer of Zahidul Islam told Prothom Alo that Jewel went into hiding after the incident. His mobile number was also found switched off.

Meanwhile, Jewel's elder brother Anwar Hossain made counter allegations claiming that their money has been stuck with Nagad.

"Drive is underway to find Jewel Rana," said Mohammad Rashedur Rahman, sub-inspector of Banani Police Station adding that the people involved in embezzling money will be found and brought under the law.

SirajganjShop collects payment of the products they sell through various digital payment gateways. On 14 March, they signed an agreement with Nagad for this purpose. According to the agreement, Nagad was working as a payment service provider of the online platform.

The head and regional offices of SirajganjShop located in Sirajganj municipal town were found closed. Moreover, Jewel Rana was not found at his residence.

On 12 September, 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.