HC-appointed board resigns, Shamima to rejoin Evaly as director

The High Court (HC) has ordered the inclusion of Shamima Nasreen, her mother and brother-in-law on the new board of directors of controversial e-commerce platform Evaly. 

The HC bench of Justice Muhammad Khurshid Alam Sarkar passed the order late last month.

This information has been confirmed by the Ministry of Commerce and e-CAB.

Five-member board of directors for Evaly formed by the high court eleven months ago resigned on Monday. Former Supreme Court Appellate Division Judge AHM Shamsuddin Chowdhury Manik was the head of that council. Others on the board included former secretary Mohammad Rezaul Ahsan, former additional secretary Mahbub Kabir Milan, chartered accountant Fakhruddin Ahmed and lawyer Khan Mohammad Shamim Aziz.

It is said that the outgoing board will hand over the responsibility to the new board on Thursday. This decision also came from the High Court.

Shamima Nasreen and her other two family members will be inducted as members of Evaly's management board at the meeting on 22 September.

Launched on 16 December 2018, Evaly pretended to be driven by dreams to build an Amazon or Alibaba of Bangladesh, grew too big riding on a dangerous business model and offering abnormal discounts to attract huge customers, taking advances from them and delivering products months later. 

It was apparent that the firm was depending on the fresh flow of advances from customers to clear the previous bills and running the business was synonymous with increasing the liabilities of the firm, identical to a Ponzi scheme.

It all happened before the regulators, policymakers addressed the risk of the widening liabilities of the business and an increasing number of people being trapped there.

Following a petition filed by a customer, the HC on 22 September last year put a moratorium on the sale or transfer of all movable and immovable properties of Evaly.

The court also issued a ruling, asking why a liquidator should not be appointed to wind down the e-commerce platform immediately.

The court on 18 October 2021 formed a four-member new board to manage, control, and assess the liabilities of the e-commerce platform.

According to Evaly's own assessment, it has assets of only Tk121 crore, while it owes customers and merchants more than Tk1,000 crore.