Rab
Dhamaka Shopping had no licence, no account: Rab
Dhamaka Shopping was operating its business without any trade licence and it used to make transactions in the name of Invariant Telecom Bangladesh Ltd.
“Dhamaka Shopping has no trade licence, and its transactions were made in the name of Invariant Telecom Bangladesh Ltd tactfully. Rab has detected the transactions of Tk 750 crore,” said Commander Khandaker Al Moin, director of Rab legal and media wing.
He said this at a press briefing held at Rab’s Karwan Bazar office.
Earlier, the elite force arrested three people, including the chief operating officer of e-commerce platform Dhamaka Shopping from Tejgaon area of the capital on charges of fraud.
The arrestees were identified as Dhamaka COO Sirajul Islam Rana, 34, Imtiaz Hasan Sabuj, 31, category head of mobile fashion and Ibrahim Swapan, 33, category head electronics of the company.
Read: Dhamaka COO arrested for 'fraud'
On September 23, a customer of Tongi filed a case against chairman, managing director and COO of Dhamaka Shopping with Tongi West Police Station.
Dhamaka Digital launched its operation in 2018 and officially started its operation as Dhamaka Shopping in 2020, said Commander Khandaker Al Moin.
During their interrogations, the arrestees said the office and depot rent of the e-commerce platform remained unpaid due to the financial crisis. The salaries of its employees also remained unpaid.
The activities of Dhamaka Shopping have remained suspended since June, 2021 following the relocation of the office.
Read: We are not impressed by the E-valy and other arrests
The main aim of the company was to embezzle money of suppliers and customers and remove the money through ‘hold money process plan’, he said, adding that they used to offer special discounts to attract customers.
Dhamaka had three lakh customers and they were involved in selling mobile and TV sets, refrigerators, motorbikes, home appliances and furniture by offering discounts.
The most attractive offer of their company is 20-30% discount on signature cards, 50% discount on Dhakama night and 20-30 % discount on regular purchase offers.
During the interrogations, the elite force came to know that the company follows the ‘Inventory zero model’ and ‘Hold money process plan’ to cheat people.
Evaly’s liabilities over Tk 1,000 crore
Mohammad Rassel, the man behind Evaly, in 2009 started his career as a coaching center teacher who by 2018 became the owner of a company with over 3,700 employees, and positioned as the country’s second largest e-commerce platform.
With year-long huge discounts and up to 150% cashback offers the platform was able to attract a huge number of customers across the country.
But with complaints and irregularities it soon became a name for controversy in the e-commerce market.
On September 16, after the arrest of Evaly’s CEO Mohammad Rassel and Chairperson, his wife Shamima Nasrin RAB revealed that the platform counts liabilities over Tk 1,000 crore.
Though Rassel wanted to create Evaly’s brand value to sell the platform to some foreign company, the supply chain could not be maintained and liabilities kept growing, he said.
The couple also admitted that they had little investment on the platform. The discount-trap was what made customers pay advance for the products that fueled the growth of this platform.
On Friday afternoon a Dhaka court placed Rassel and Nasrin on a three-remand leaving millions of its customers in worries of never getting back their money and keeping the country waiting for more insights into this burning scam.
From coaching center to Evaly
Rassel was from Dhaka's Savar and grew up in a boarding school. After his post-graduation in 2007, he started teaching in a coaching center from 2009. In 2011, he got into the banking sector where in several banks he worked for six years and learned the mechanism behind the banking process. Meanwhile in 2013, he completed his MBA and started developing different business ideas. In 2017, he developed a company for kids' products that eventually became the Kidz Diaper brand. Selling the diaper brand Rassel established Evaly in December 2018, making himself the CEO and his wife Nasrin the chairman of the e-commerce platform.
Evaly mechanism
With over 4.4 million registered customers the platform has always made year-long huge discounts and cashback offers. With advanced payments from the customers the platform grabbed more customers by increasing the level of promotion, i.e. increasing the discount. In this manner the platform used customers’ money to bring more money into its account; more similar to a Ponzi scheme: advance payment from customers - use the money to run massive promotion campaigns - get more money – repeat.
According to Rassel, Evaly followed the strategy of making 1: 2 attractive deal offers more like the foreign e-commerce platforms and extracted money from the manufacturers-customers supply chain. His eventual plan was to build brand value of the platform to sell it at a huge price - something he almost thought he had with the Jamuna Group in the final stretch. All the liabilities too would of course be transferred.
For this reason, even after the notices from the ministry asking for transaction records, Evaly did not disclose any such information - it rather sought six months more, during which Rassell the showman would surely try and get someone to pay for his greatest trick. But this time the show was over, and no-one was buying.
We are not impressed by the E-valy and other arrests
The big dhamaka arrest as usual with a lot of media hooping has made people even more suspicious. They have seen far too many of them and many think that this it's more for pr than anything else. Even though the RAB has been quite diligent in arresting people and showing them off, we have seen very few post arrest action. In fact even when RAB moves in and tries a criminal and sentences the same to jail, the person goes free as was the case of Haji Selim’s son, . ( ?????) So we do admire the scene of alleged criminals being arrested but we are a bit more cynical about what really happens to them in the end.
We have a long list of such arrests and the big one was around casino parlours of Dhaka and included mid-level political activists of the ruling party. We have no problem with what was the intent behind the arrests and all that but till date we have seen nothing about moving the cases. It seems the law and justice system needs a lot of rest and time to deal with such criminals and thieves and its best if it’s billed that way.
READ: Evaly CEO, chairman arrested from Mohammadpur residence
The issue is also that when casino or gambling goes away, something else takes their place. So yaba trade is exploding and with that has arrived other drugs. Crystal meth has entered in a big way and LSD might follow. We are clearly a peasant population who in the urban space don’t know how to manage our lives so though we can’t afford to be drug addicts, we do become so as a people.
It’s fine as far as independent addicts go but the social cost of drug addiction is high. And we are certainly not taking that into account. Nor is anyone looking at the sustained funding of crimes from a sustainable source. More significantly the rise of the drug economy as a major competitor of state authority is inevitable and threatens stability. Isolated encounter killings have had no impact and some law enforcement officials and lawmakers have been accused of collusion.
The criminal network
What it basically means is that a huge criminal activities, criminal support and criminal protection network exists, which has effectively neutralized the system that the Government claims to have to counter them. When people don’t know where the danger lies, the responsibility of warning lies with the GOB and in doing that the authorities have been effective.
One after another, criminals are arrested; pictures are taken and then the entire matter is lost in the black hole. Media meanwhile lunges for the next criminal to be displayed knowing well that it’s’ not much more than a media event.
READ: Travel ban imposed on Evaly chairman, MD
This system can go on but if it has to stop, the best thing to do is to make sure the regulators are a little more honest, capable, efficient, etc and support the formal state which is in such short supply now. Otherwise drives against crime including the great sounding slogan, “zero tolerance against corruption” may begin to sound like a movie title more than reality.
Evaly CEO, chairman arrested from Mohammadpur residence
Members of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested Evaly CEO Mohammad Rassel and his wife Shamima Nasrin, the chairman of the company, conducting a raid on their house at Mohammadpur in the city.
Sources at the Rab headquarters said the elite force members cordoned off the multi-storey building at Sir Sayed Road, Mohammadpur around 3:30 pm and arrested them around 5 pm.
The owners of Evaly, an e-commerce firm, were allegedly involved in embezzlement of several hundred crores of taka. They were arrested after a victim filed a case against them.
Read: Evaly is under ACC probe for alleged misappropriation
Earlier, on Wednesday night, a victim, Arif Baker, lodged a case with Gulshan police station accusing the couple.
Sub-inspector Ahidul Islam, the investigating officer of the case, said the case was registered over the allegation of embezzlement of money and fraudulence.
Uttara man arrested for brandishing firearms, setting off panic
Members of Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) arrested a businessman from Uttara in Dhaka along with some firearms and ammunition on charge of setting off panic and threatening people.
Sources at Rab headquarters said Md Mejbah Uddin Sarker alias Rubel, 44, son of late Md Ali Sarker of Uttar, posted in his Facebook wall some of his photos roaming around streets along with armed bodyguards and threatening people.
Read: Rab exposes Bangladesh’s stunning bad billionaire
Rubel’s dangerous acts ultimately came to the notice of Rab-1 and they arrested him from Uttara sector-7 on Wednesday night.
According to a Rab media release, Rubel used to upload photos of himself displaying firearms to set off panic and threaten people in the area through social media from his personal ID as was involved in extortion in the area.
During interrogation, Rubel said he had hired the three gunmen as his bodyguards.
Read: An on-duty Rab constable killed by bullet triggered from his own firearm
Rubel along with his bodyguard Faruq, 45, and two others tried to establish control in areas like Uttara West Thana and Tongi.
One foreign pistol, two magazines, 50 bullets, two pistol covers, an arms license and two mobile phones were seized from his possession, the media release added.
Man held for running illegal telecom setup in Dhaka
A joint team of Rapid Action Battalion-2 (RAB) and Bangladesh telecom regulator arrested a man for allegedly running an illegal telecom setup in the capital's Lalmatia area.
The arrestee has been identified as Shafiqul Islam (40), a resident of Brahmanbaria.
Read:BTRC bonds with TKC Telecom to monitor mobile operators’ activities
Shafiqul was nabbed from a house on Zakir Hossain Road in Lalmatia on Tuesday evening, following a tip-off that he had been selling international voice calls bypassing the legal gateway for the past 18 months.
Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP) components worth Tk 30 lakh, including three sim-boxes of 512 ports, two sim-boxes of 256 ports, seven laptops, five modems, one switch and 900 Teletalk sim cards, were seized from his house.
Read: BTRC reminds users of least-promoted service: 'Do Not Disturb' for promo texts!
Shafiqul told interrogators that his four-member gang had been in the illegal telecom business for nearly one-and-a-half years.
The four would sell maximum talktime worth Tk 2.30 lakh per day, causing losses to the tune of Tk 7 crore to the state exchequer, said Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission officials.
An on-duty Rab constable killed by bullet triggered from his own firearm
A Rab member died after being by a bullet reportedly from his own firearm at the main gate of Rapid Action Battalion headquarters in Uttara, Dhaka on Monday, an official said.
However, it was not immediately clear whether Constable Shovo Mallo, 26, died by suicide or accidental firing of the bullet.
Contacted, ASP Imran Khan, assistant director (legal and media wing) at the Rab told UNB that Shovo was on duty at the main gate of the Rab headquarters. Suddenly, he was hit by a bullet triggered from his own firearm at around 2:30 pm.
READ: Rab arrest three members of a human trafficking gang
He was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital where the duty doctor declared him dead at around 5:15 pm, said Imran.
Replying to a question, he said it was not immediately clear how the incident occurred. However, an investigation has been ordered to ascertain the actual reason, he added.
READ: ‘Rohingya robber’ killed in ‘gunfight’ with Rab in Cox's Bazar
4 suspected JMB militants held in Mymensingh
Members of the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) arrested four suspected members of banned militant outfit Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB) early on Saturday morning.
The identities of the arrestees are yet to be revealed. A cache of arms and explosives has been seized from their possession.
Wing Commander Rokunuzzaman, commanding officer of Rab-14, said acting on intelligence inputs, a team of RAB-14 raided Khagdahar in Mymensingh district.
Read:JMB member executed in Gazipur jail
Sensing the presence of the elite force, the JMB men opened fire on RAB, prompting the personnel them to retaliate.
Read:JMB member Abdur Rahman arrested in Savar
"However, the RAB men managed to overpower and arrest the militants after the brief exchange of fire," the officer said.
5 members of car theft gang held in Narayanganj
Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) members have arrested five members of a car theft gang from Fatullah in Narayanganj district.
After gleaning information from some previously arrested members of the gang, a Rab team managed to arrest its other members during an operation on Friday.
The arrestees are coordinator of the gang Md. Azim Uddin, Md. Rofiq Ullah, Md. Selim, Md. Kamrul Hosaain and Omar Faruk.
READ: Woman gang-raped after abduction from rail station in Ullapara
During the operation, the Rab team seized three pick-up vans, one CNG-autotrickshaw, a gun, one round of bullet, three knives, a Chinese axe, six mobile phone sets and Tk 12,000 in cash from the gang members.
READ: 4 members of teen gang ‘Gazi group’ held in Dhaka
Rab media wing ASP Imran Khan said during interrogation it was known that the car theft gang consists of 15-20 members who are active on Dhaka-Chattogram highway, Narayanganj, Savar and Gazipur.
Rab arrest three members of a human trafficking gang
In a drive against human trafficking Rab have arrested three members of gang from Dhaka city, Satkhira and Madaripur districts after wide media coverage of the smuggling of a woman and her teenaged daughter to India.
The drive, conducted from Sunday night to Monday morning, came amid reports of growing incidents of trafficking people luring them with jobs abroad, a Rab officer said.
According to Rab the gang members were involved in the trafficking of a 17-year-old girl in last January promising her a job in an Indian parlour. Later the girl’s mother was also trafficked.
Also read: Human trafficking ring busted in Natore, 2 held
They both have been rescued and repatriated to Bangladesh.
The arrestees were identified as Kallu Shohagh alias Kallu Nagin Shohag alias Kallu, 40, ringleader of Kala-Nagin syndicate and son of Matiur Rahman of Madaripur district, Mohammad Shohagh alias Shohagh alias Nagin Shohagh, 32, son of Kabir Hossain of Dhaka’s Pallabi area and Billal Hossain, 41, son of Akimuddin Morol of Satkhira district.
Tipped off, a team of Rab-4 conducted the simultaneous drive and arrested them from Madaripur’s Shibchar upazila, Satkhira’s Debhata upazila and Pallabi area of the capital, said ASP Imran Khan of Rab Headquarters (media).
After interrogation, Rab came to know that the syndicate members have long been involved in trafficking women and young girls to India with a promise of lucrative jobs there.
Some 20-25 members were involved in the gang and Billal used to work as the agent of the gang along the bordering Satkhira district, said Rab.
Also read: Rab arrests seven members of an alleged human trafficking gang
The syndicate members are active in Mirpur, Tejgaon and Gazipur district.
In the wake of the alleged fraud, cases have been filed by relatives of the victims in Bangladesh at various times. Complaints have also been received from several families who have gone missing at different times. Accordingly, RAB has intensified its intelligence surveillance.
Rab launched an investigation on trafficking of women to India and over the recent alleged rape and torture of a Bangladeshi woman by fellow Bangladeshis there.