The Commerce Ministry has rejected Alesha Mart’s plea of transferring consumer money into its accounts, which has been stuck with payment gateways after making advance payments for orders with the platform.
Instead, the ministry is working to refund Tk42 crore worth of funds to the platform’s consumers that have been stuck in the Escrow system. A senior official of the ministry confirmed the matter to Dhaka Tribune.
Earlier, Alesha Mart’s chairman, Md Monzur Alam Sikder had urged the ministry to allow it to take in cash from funds stuck in escrow and transfer it to its account.
He sent letters to Senior Commerce Secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh claiming that a large amount of the platform’s money has been stuck with its payment gateway SSL Commerz which is direly needed to settle Alesha Mart’s owed liabilities to its consumers.
E-commerce Consumer Association (eCAB) Vice President Shahab Uddin explained Dhaka Tribune on the rejection of such plea, saying that the Escrow system does not allow the seller to refund money, instead, a third party disburses the funds to the consumer in the same manner, the payment was made.
“Any advance payment is held by the third-party who either releases funds to the seller on successful delivery and its verification or if the consumer had not received the delivery, the third-party is supposed to reimburse the payment to the payee,” the eCAB official told Dhaka Tribune.
Moreover, according to an official of the Commerce Ministry’s digital cell, a list of 24 e-commerce companies that were sued by consumers have been collected from the police headquarters to begin the refund process for all consumers, with or without police cases.
According to Additional Commerce Secretary AHM Safiquzzaman, the ministry has already taken steps to refund the money of Alesha Mart’s consumers within the next two weeks, and customers who placed orders after June 30 last year will get refunds first.
“The ministry found Tk42 crore pending in the gateways, which hundreds of customers deposited as advance payments to Alesha Mart after June 30 2021,” AHM Safiquzzaman said.
On the other hand, the central bank found at least 56 accounts of Alesha Mart with different banks, in which customers deposited Tk2,001 crore.
On the other hand, Alesha withdrew Tk1,999 crore from the accounts.
According to the central bank’s intelligence unit which has been keeping tabs on the e-commerce platform alongside other bodies such as the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), the company now has only Tk2.07 crore in its frozen accounts.
As per the report from November 8, Alesha Mart withdrew Tk1,999 crore of the Tk2,00 crore deposited in its accounts since its inception and currently, the platform has a liability of Tk300 crore.
As per Alesha Mart itself, it still has around 7,000 pending orders worth Tk200 crore which could be higher.
As per a published delivery list by the platform of around 45,000 motorcycles ordered in its last campaign that ended last June, more than half of the products were still undelivered which is worth several hundred crore more.
Following the withdrawal, the platform’s chairman sought support from the Commerce Ministry, twice in securing bank loans, despite getting rejected once.
