The High Court is likely to form a board of directors to oversee the management and business activities of controversial e-commerce platform Evaly.
A chartered accountant, a lawyer, a secretary and a former judge may be included in the body. The court has already asked the commerce ministry to propose names of three secretaries for including one of them in the four-member body, said the lawyers concerned.
The High Court bench of Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar is to issue order in the regard today (Wednesday).
Meanwhile, the Registrar of Joint Stock Companies and Firms has submitted the documents of controversial e-commerce platform Evaly to the High Court as per a previous directive.
Documents including the audit report of the company till 2019 were submitted to the court on Monday. Lawyers concerned in the case confirmed the matter on Tuesday.
On September 30, the HC bench asked the Joint Stock Companies and Firms and others concerned to provide all documents regarding Evaly to the court by October 12. The court had issued the order after hearing a petition filed by a consumer named Farhad Hossain.
Even though the court had asked for all the documents including the recent audit report, the Joint Stock Companies and Firms only submitted the audit reports till 2019.
The writ was filed on September 22. Later, the higher court imposed a ban on the sale and transfer of properties of Evaly. Its owners are now behind bars.
According to the petition, after paying full in advance for a washing machine, the consumer did not get his product from Evaly, even after ten months had passed.
The consumer also claimed that he was repeatedly given false assurance by Evaly officials on the delivery of the product.
Controversial e-commerce platform Evaly, as well as regulatory bodies and relevant stakeholders, were made respondents in the writ filed by the consumer.
Apart from Evaly, the other respondents are the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit, Directorate of National Consumers' Right Protection, bKash, Nagad, Bangladesh Competition Commission, e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh (e-CAB), Basis, Bangladesh Bank, and Commerce Secretary.
Evaly has been in the limelight for luring customers by offering huge discounts on various products, including cars and motorcycles, and did not deliver. It had also reportedly not paid its merchants.
An Evaly customer named Arif Baker brought charges of fraud and issuance of death threats against Rassel and Nasrin in the case filed with the Gulshan police station on September 23.
The duo was arrested from their flat in Mohammadpur after a raid by Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) members on the same day.
According to the case statement, the plaintiff noticed Evaly’s advertising in May and made orders worth Tk 3.1 lakh from the site. The orders have yet to be fulfilled, long after they were made.
After primary interrogation, RAB claimed to quote Rassel and Nasrin, that Evaly owed more than Tk 1,000 crore to its customers and suppliers but had only Tk 30 lakh in its bank account.
Rassel had planned to enter the stock market after running his company for three years. He also had planned to declare himself bankrupt after failing to repay the debt.
