E-cash firm halts transfer deals

28 June 2007

Notice of suspended business

EXCLUSIVE by Ted Jeory

A COMPANY set up to transfer cash between immigrant workers in Britain and their families in Bangladesh has stopped taking orders.

Lawyers acting for First Solution Money Transfer, with its offices in Whitechapel, issued the order on Wednesday (June 27) after growing anger in the community around Brick Lane.

Several customers have told the Advertiser the cash they handed over to company agents several weeks ago has yet to arrive home.

One woman, a restaurant worker in Brick Lane, welled with tears describing how her two young daughters in Bangladesh relied on money she sends.

Now Bethnal Green and Bow MP George Galloway has voiced concern to Government authorities.

"This is a relatively unregulated area of financial services," he said.

"There is no effective insurance for the large number of relatively-poor people of Bangladeshi origin who've been trying to get money back to their families in Bangladesh over the last couple of months through First Solutions.

"It is for the sake of these people both in Britain and in Bangladesh that I am now very concerned."

First Solution is one of hundreds of small money transfer businesses operating across Britain modelled on the US giant Western Union.

They are often cheaper, quicker and more convenient than conventional banks.

Typically, customers take cash from £100 to several thousands, into an office and state the intended destination.

For a commission, the money order is wired over and arrives within a few days to be cashed at the other end.

First Solution has been operating around three years. Its Brick Lane office says it takes around £50,000 a day, which is then banked with Barclays and NatWest for processing.

Records at Companies House show First Solution Money Transfer Ltd is run and owned by three directors.

These include Dr Fazal Mahmood, managing director of Channel S, the Bengali satellite TV station, and Nazrul Islam, a reporter on Tower Hamlets council's East End Life newspaper.

But Mr Islam said when contacted this week he had resigned as a director and sold his shareholding because of "family commitments" a "couple of weeks ago."

When asked whether he was aware First Solution had been having problems, he said: "No. I didn't attend board meetings. It was the others who run the company."

Dr Mahmood did not return the Advertiser's calls.