Corrupting e-commerce sector

E-commerce is an emerging business sector in Bangladesh having tremendous potential for growth. If done properly, maintaining all rules of the game, it can generate revenue worth billions of dollars. But building trust of the clients is the precondition of this business as most transactions take place through the internet. And trust building is an area where some of the front ranking c-commerce companies are failing miserably in recent years while dealing with clients.

Firstly, the lack of an infallible policy encompassing all important aspects and secondly, the dishonesty of the entrepreneurs, are two main factors contributing to the rise of incidence of deceiving and duping unsuspecting clients in the country. People rush in droves in response to their enticing advertisements on Facebook and other social media platforms, invest huge sums of money without doing their basic calculation and without checking the background of the owners. Such clients expect substantial return on investment within a short time. But when nothing of the sort happens, they realise they have been duped and return home betrayed. The story is the same for these front ranking companies which now owe clients thousands of crores of takas as they failed to deliver goods in time or return the money advanced against orders.  

In the recent months we have seen some major market players coming under the scrutiny of the government sleuths as complaints against them began to mount on a daily basis. According to a report published by Cyber Crime Awareness Foundation (CCA Foundation), a volunteer cyber security awareness organization, more than 11.48 per cent clients of the e-commerce companies were deceived in the year 2020. The percentage of cheated clients was 7.44 per cent in 2019.

 When ecommerce company Evaly failed to deliver goods and return money even after giving new dates a number of times, some aggrieved clients lodged complaints against them in various police stations of the country. Consequently, the ministry of commerce requested the home ministry and anti-corruption commission to launch an investigation and take legal action as per laws of the land. Eventually law enforcing agencies collected relevant documents and took the managing director and chairman of the company into custody a couple of days back. They will be prosecuted in a court of law.

Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Bank has stopped all bank transactions of Evaly. It has decided to investigate the financial transactions and other e-commerce activities of the company in question. The head of Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), confirmed that bank accounts of Evaly and its top executives had been frozen.

Media reports are now making rounds on law enforcing agencies keeping many more companies under watch which are suspected to be involved in illegal business activities in the name of ecommerce. Surprisingly, even after the arrest of the Evaly top operators, these companies continue to carry on their shady business in the country.  The ministry of commerce has recommended an investigation against them to the home ministry.  Among these companies are Eorange, Aleshamart, Dhamaka Shopping, Shirajganj Shopping, Aladin Pradip, Boom Boom, Adian Mart, Qcom and Needs dot com Bd. It has been reported that four private commercial banks and one financial institute have stopped all sorts of transactions with the above-mentioned ecommerce companies.  

Some unscrupulous people launched a number of ecommerce companies in recent years based only on Facebook pages and some photographs of products. Some of them created their web page and began to offer lucrative prices against products which were otherwise costlier in real shops. Initially their businesses thrived but at a later stage when they began to play hide and seek with clients the latter put pressure for return of money against un-delivered products. Soon this duplicity came to the notice of the Directorate of National Consumers’ Right Protection and Ecab and they began to collect information.

When unscrupulous people start a business with the evil intent of cheating people, they forget the old adage that one cannot fool all the people all the time. At one stage the long arm of the law will hunt them down and put them behind bars.