When a failed project drains public funds, common sense dictates its cancellation. But the Awami League government's response was to spend even more on it.

This is exactly what happened with Binimoy, a platform that allowed transactions between mobile financial services (MFS) providers.

Zareef Hamid, the son of Nasrul Hamid, the former state minister for power, energy and mineral resources, has a significant stake in Binimoy, which was launched in November 2022 by Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the son of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and also her ICT Adviser.

To develop the platform, the ICT Division signed a Tk 54.95 crore deal with a consortium of three companies: Velwire, Microsoft Bangladesh and Orion Informatics.

Zareef is the founder and chief executive officer of Velwire, and Zarif Munir, the son of Muhammad Zamir, the chairman of the Awami League's international affairs sub-committee, was part of the Velwire team.

However, Binimoy proved to be an abysmal failure, with an alarming error rate of 25-40 percent, leading to widespread customer dissatisfaction, according to assessments by the ICT Division.

A failure rate of less than 1 percent is the industry benchmark for a transaction app.

"We have stopped it -- this was merely an attempt to loot public money."

— Faiz Taiyeb Ahmad Special assistant to CA

Only nine banks, three MFS providers and two payment service providers offered services through the platform.

And yet, the previous government intended to spend Tk 277 crore until 2029 to "upgrade" the app to make it "sustainable", according to the development project proposal prepared by the ICT Division's Bangladesh Computer Council.

"We have stopped it -- this was merely an attempt to loot public money," said Faiz Taiyeb Ahmad, the special assistant to the chief adviser with executive authority over posts, telecom and ICT ministry.

After developing the platform, the ICT division handed it over to the Bangladesh Bank for rolling out to customers.

Then in January 2024, the central bank signed a deal with two private firms to maintain and operate Binimoy, with one of them being Velwire.

The ICT Division's designs for Binimoy did not stop there.

It wanted all banks and financial institutions to be integrated into the platform, according to the document.

Not only that, but government bill payment, salary disbursement, benefit distribution, tax and VAT collection, pension payment, subsidies and metro rail card recharges were supposed to be processed through Binimoy.

The target was to connect over 100 institutions to the platform.

This meant that 50 percent of the platform's earnings would go to private companies despite being fully developed with public funds.

The entire cost was borne by the government exchequer, with planned expenditures of Tk 47.25 crore this fiscal year, Tk 49.48 crore in fiscal 2025-26, Tk 55.75 crore in fiscal 2026-27, Tk 60.61 crore in fiscal 2027-28, and Tk 64.54 crore in fiscal 2028-29.

This plan came crashing down with the fall of the Hasina-led government.

The Bangladesh government should have managed the financial transaction-related systems, but the previous regime snatched control from the central bank to financially benefit individuals close to the administration, Ahmad said.

For this, they deliberately weakened the National Payment Switch Bangladesh, he added.

"The interoperability of MFS is facing challenges because the previous government handed it over to the ICT ministry and a shell company has been created by Joy, introducing a platform called Binimoy, which is no longer functioning," said BB Governor Ahsan H Mansur on January 29.

Binimoy is currently non-operational.

"The deal was made with the companies for maintenance and operation. But after August 5, they disappeared. We are not willing to continue with such companies," said Arif Hossain Khan, the central bank's spokesperson.

BB is now working to replace Binimoy with a new platform under its control.

"We are in discussions with the Gates Foundation, which has an internationally applied application already launched in 15 countries. We plan to test it and quickly implement it," Mansur said in the roundtable on January 29.

The Daily Star could not reach Velwire, Zareef and Zarif Munir for comment.