Alesha pays back from today

Crisis-ridden e-commerce portal Alesha Mart starts today (Thursday) the refunding of its customers from the money that got stuck with the SSL Payment gateway.

As part of the move, a meeting on refunding the stuck funds is expected to be held at commerce ministry.

After the meeting, senior commerce secretary Tapan Kanti Ghosh will inaugurate the disbursement of the funds at his secretariat office.

Additional commerce secretary and chief of central digital commerce cell AHM Shafiquzzaman, senior ministry officials and representatives from e-CAB, law-enforcement agencies, different state agencies and e-commerce platforms will attend the function.

Currently, an estimated Tk 420 million has been stuck up with the gateway as customers paid the money in advance against the products ordered, a source said.

Initially, some 485 clients of the tainted platform will get back over Tk 100 million out of the total Tk 420 million funds stashed with SSL, he added.

The company's bank account has been blocked by the authorities concerned. Presently, it has a balance of only Tk 20 million in the account, discloses the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit.

It has already withdrawn around Tk 19.99 billion out of Tk 20.01 billion deposited by the clients.

Earlier, Alesha Mart sought money from the state bailout package several times to resume its operations and pay back its clients.

It requested the ministry to arrange for them a loan of Tk 3.0 billion as working capital.

The ministry suggested that Alesha Mart apply to the central bank directly for a working-capital loan as there is no way the ministry can provide such capital.

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