Three officials of Flight Expert, an e-commerce platform for booking flights and hotels and visa assistance, in the early hours of Sunday after its clients’ allegations that the company’s managing director embezzled money and fled the country.
Current whereabouts of the MD, Salman Bin Rashid Shah Saim, remains unknown, according to the police.
Motijheel police officer-in-charge Mesbah Uddin confirmed ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· on Sunday evening that they had arrested three Flight Expert officials—its head of finance Sakib Hossain, 32, chief commercial officer Saeed Ahmed, 40, and chief operating officer AKM Sadat Hossain, 32.
‘We have found 18 clients so far, complaining that they had lost over Tk 4 crore. But we fear that the number of affected people is manifold,’ the OC said, adding that a case was filed on Saturday night with the Motijheel police against five people, including the three arrested ones.
Mesbah Uddin said that Flight Expert MD Salman Bin Rashid Shah Saim and his father, MA Rashid, were the two others accused in the case.
Asked about when and which country the MD along with his family fled to, the OC said that he did not know.Â
‘We are investigating into the incident. We will reveal after finding out the information,’ he added.
None from the company could be communicated for comments as its official contact number was found switched off.
A Flight Expert official, seeking anonymity, told ¶¶Òõ¾«Æ· that the company employed over 100 people all of whom became jobless overnight when the management left a message on an internal Whatsapp group that the company was shut down. Â
The official also said that they were not served any official business closure notice.Â
The scam of e-commerce is not new in the country as allegations against several companies were raised in the past.Â
On April 6, a Dhaka metropolitan magistrate court sentenced e-commerce platform Evaly’s chairperson Shamima Nasrin and her husband and company managing director Mohammad Rassel to three-year imprisonment in a fraud case.
In August, 2021, virtual outlet e-orange.shop owner Sonia Mehzabin, her husband Masukur Rahman, and its chief operating officer Aman Ullah were arrested in a fraud case filed over embezzlement of Tk 1,100 crore from the consumers.
