Mobile financial service Nagad has suspended around 13,000 accounts suspecting fraudulent transactions with e-commerce sites and set sleuths for a probe.
The public-sector MFS outfit, Nagad, Saturday sent the list of these accounts to Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU), law-enforcing agencies, including the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), and the cybercrime unit to investigate the transactions.
According to investigating departments concerned, most of these accounts have records of unusual transactions with one certain e-commerce site named sirajganjshop.
Admitting the fact, Tanvir A Mishuk, Managing Director of Nagad, said these accounts have records of highly unusual transactions.
"Our system has identified these accounts and handed over the list to concerned agencies-they will investigate the matter," he told The Financial Express.
The Nagad MD said these accounts made very unusual transactions like 50 payments to e-commerce sites against product orders in a day, payment by one but refund to other accounts, several payments, and refund in a day, etc.
However, he wouldn't disclose the total number of accounts and names of e-commerce sites.
But a source in the investigating authorities said the number of accounts is more than 13,000 and most of the unusual transactions happened with sirajganjshop.
A source in the cybercrimes unit said that many of these phone numbers associated with accounts have been found switched- off.
The commerce ministry last week sent a letter to the Bangladesh Bank seeking information on the latest financial situation of nine e-commerce companies, including sirajganjshop.
The BFIU, along with the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Police and the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), has started looking into the activities of 15 e-commerce companies for various irregularities, including money laundering, since July last.
Several financial institutions, banks, and MFS service providers banned transactions for 10 e-commerce platforms, including Evaly, Alesha Mart, Dhamaka, E-orange, Sirajganj Shop, Aladiner Prodip, Qcoom, Boom Boom, Adyen Mart, and E-needs.
Bangladesh Bank and ecab, the association of e-commerce platforms, have suspended the membership of some of these e-commerce sites and begun scrutiny over some of these e-commerce platforms.
Leading mobile financial service provider bKash also in mid-July suspended transactions through its channel of 10 e-commerce platforms, including sirajganjshop.
However, Nagad let their platform be used for payments by these e-commerce platforms.
Nagad's Head of External Affairs Lt Col Md Kousar Soukat Ali (retd) said in a press statement, "The government mobile financial service Nagad is technologically one of the most reliable operators of our country. It is quite impossible to penetrate Nagad network for any evil intension."
Transaction of the accounts was suspended temporarily and an official complaint lodged with the Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC), says the press release.
The process of filing a case was underway, it said.
The external affairs division of the MFS posted a video on its facebook page explaining the pecuniary matter.
Several hundred people claiming Nagad users commented in the video on facebook that Nagad is responsible for their loss as it first let payments be made for products using their platform and later suspended accounts.
After its launch in 26 March 2019, the Bangladesh Post Office-run MFS, Nagad, is working to bring and ease the financial transactions by people on digital platform.
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