Evaly customers: Payments held up over missing server password
A missing server password is holding up all payments of Evaly customers and merchants and there is seemingly no way to retrieve it.
Only Evaly CEO Mohammad Rassell knew the password, but he claimed to have forgotten it.
Such is the system that even the a2i, a special government programme, and the police's Criminal Investigation Department are not being able to retrieve the password.
The court-instituted Evaly board claimed this at a press conference at the beleaguered company's corporate office yesterday.
The server contains data of all buyer and seller transactions. Without that data, the worth and veracity of the claims cannot be estimated, said Evaly Managing Director Mahbub Kabir Milon.
Justice AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik, who leads the board, said, "We contacted Amazon but they told us that they could not cooperate with us in retrieving the account and that they need the original account holder.
"I met Rassell in jail. He said he cannot remember the password. He said that it was written in a black diary kept in his desk, but we found no such diary," he added.
As the claims cannot be verified, a sum of Tk 25 crore stuck in escrow accounts of different payment gateways is also not being returned to customers, said the Evaly MD.
Since July 1 last year, the gateways have been holding payments made by customers in escrow accounts and waiting for confirmation from merchants about the delivery of products, before transferring the money to the company.
"Furthermore, goods worth Tk 25 crore are in two of Evaly's warehouses," said Justice Manik.
He however said this amount is a "drop in the ocean" when compared to the claims made against the company. Evaly has liabilities of around Tk 1,000 crores.
"Some merchants have presented documents to us showing their transactions with Evaly and those are being audited," he added.
The court-instituted board this week transferred 50 percent of the company's shares to three family members of Evaly Chairman Shamima Nasrin and Rassell.
In February, the High Court passed a rule allowing the controversial e-commerce platform to transfer 50 percent of its shares to Shamima's father Rafiqul Alam Talukder, her mother Farida Talukder Lily and her brother-in-law Md Mamunur Rashid. Shamima and Rassel hold 60 percent and 40 per cent shares of Evaly respectively.
"This process took time because there were no signatures on share certificates and those were invalid. We had to cancel those share certificates and reissue new ones to Nasrin and Rassell," said Justice Manik.
The board could not find a way forward regarding retrieving the data in the server.
Rassell and Nasrin were arrested on September 16 last year on charges of embezzlement.