The commerce ministry yesterday said it was working on recovering another Tk 260 crore taken by fraudulent e-commerce entities as advance payments until last June and on refunding it to the respective customers who were not delivered products.

The ministry had earlier decided to refund customers Tk 214 crore stuck in escrow accounts of payment gateways opened since July 1 as per Bangladesh Bank directives following complaints of money being swindled.

Escrow is the use of a third party, which holds an asset or funds before they are transferred from one party to another. The third party holds the funds until both parties have fulfilled their contractual requirements.

The ministry has already written to Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to unfreeze victims' accounts as soon as possible to pay back the Tk 214 crore, said AHM Shafiquzzaman, additional secretary to the commerce ministry.

He, however, did not specifically state when and how the Tk 260 crore would be recovered and refunded.

Shafiquzzaman, also chief of a Digital Commerce Cell (DCC) formed by the ministry in February following a surge in complaints, was addressing a press conference in his Bangladesh Secretariat office.

Earlier he held a meeting with senior government officials of different ministries, departments, agencies and the central bank.

Bangladesh Bank's financial intelligence unit is also working on forming a committee so that the money can be returned. The decision of paying back the money to consumers came from a very high powered committee, said Shafiquzzaman.

If the money is found to have been laundered abroad, it will be brought back. "We have previous record of returning laundered money," he said.

The DCC chief also said three state intelligence departments provided three totals – 13, 17 and 19 – as the number of e-commerce entities which have defrauded customers and merchants of thousands of crores of taka.

"The actual number is higher," said Shafiquzzaman, without specifying or providing names.

He assured that every e-commerce entity would be provided a unique identification number in less than two months as the ministry was working on bringing them under mandatory registration to bring a stop to the fraudulence.

The ministry has already approved the registration forms that would be used for obtaining unique ID numbers and the registration will start soon online. Obtaining the unique ID from the ministry will be very simple, he said.

The DCC will hold another meeting of the 15-member committee formed under the instruction of the cabinet division on e-commerce issues.

The committee is scheduled to submit a progress report on the refunding and other issues by November 11.