‘Evaly made mistakes, did not cheat people’

Evaly Chairman Shamima Nasrin said the company made mistakes, but did not cheat its customers.

“Our greatest mistake was not picking up investment from the business at the right time. But we did not intend to deceive people. Our aim was to use the future profit to meet up primary liability. We were always in profit,” she said.

“As the government and e-cab [e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh] representatives are now with us, there is no chance of repeating the mistake,” she hoped while addressing a live press conference through Evaly’s Facebook page on Thursday afternoon.

“We have sought six months to recover from the adverse situation created by our faults. We have already taken some time-befitting and effective measures to restart the business of Evaly — like cash on delivery, PCA, cash before delivery — to sell its products,” she said.

“For the delivery of old orders and refunding money, we need to recover our server. It is risky to recover the server ID number. If our Managing Director Mohammad Rassel could talk to Amazon directly, it might be recovered,” she claimed.

She sought Rassel’s release from jail on bail on any conditions.

“Former justice HM Samsuddin Manik has said in the audit report that money was laundered. But I want to say that information gap is not money laundering,” she said, adding that the failure to maintain the voucher of lakhs of subscribers in an orderly fashion does not necessarily mean that Evaly was involved in money laundering.

If our server is recovered and if we are given time, we will be able to account for the transaction of every taka, she claimed.

Observing that Evaly needs investment to repay its debts, Nasrin said, “What we need is to present ourselves as a profitable business to attract investors. We have 45 lakh subscribers, 30,000 merchants. If people purchase goods from Evaly, it can attract local and international investments.”

“We have products worth almost Tk25 crore at our godown, but it is not sufficient to clear all the debts. We will distribute equally as much as possible, soon after the server is recovered.