The Easiest 4 Million Taka Scam

About 1500 people bought tickets costing minimum Tk 2000 each to attend Ghulam Ali Night at Basundhara Convention Centre on Feb 10th, 2011. There were sponsors aplenty too. After only two songs by Ghulam Ali on a broken sound system, the guests were asked to have dinner while the technical issues were fixed. The diversion allowed the organizers to call in security forces and elope the premises, without any announcement or apology.

Only one daily Prothom Alo reported the mishap. There was no follow-up anywhere to bring the felons to light, even though the showdown involved such an international celebrity. The last major event, SRK Live, now seems far better with all their mismanagement. If there is no accountability, such scams will only grow. The involved parties should be contacted for an explanation if not a refund.

Perhaps the Pakistani Embassy could be contacted for their version of why Ghulam Ali left the stage and what went wrong.

The event was organized by Web Entertainment Ltd. Some googling revealed that they have arranged similar classical music events for Dhaka Club - Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Oct 2009 and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Nov 2008. Their CEO is reported as SMN Islam James and a matching profile is on Facebook. The website listed http://www.welbd.com/ is currently down.

The Financial Mirror is named as the ‘Partner’ and you wonder what newspaper this day does not have a website. Their online presence is shady overall but Google Maps does give Dhanmondi address.

These organizers may in turn blame themselves for choosing The Mirror Media & Productions Ltd. to do the event management, though I am not sure about the separation of roles between these 3 entities. Anyhow, it is interesting that, according to BusyTrade.com, this is a sister concern of The Financial Mirror, located in the same building, and their website http://www.mirrormediabd.com/ is currently down too!

Police did their job in containing the disgruntled mob at the event venue. Now perhaps someone somewhere could try to bring some justice to the cheated audience.