The owner of Trust Gold & Diamond Ltd, Soumen Saha, 35, has been arrested in Dhaka in connection with an alleged Tk14.38 crore investment fraud involving a jewellery business partnership. According to police, Saha allegedly gained the trust of businessman Biplab Chakraborty over several years before persuading him to invest large sums in a new jewellery venture on the promise of formal partnership.
The relationship that investigators say became the foundation for the alleged fraud began ordinarily enough. According to the complaint, Chakraborty first met Saha in 2020 through business dealings at Metro Shopping Mall in Dhaka, with their relationship reportedly deepening during the COVID-19 pandemic, a period when personal and financial dependencies between the two men appear to have strengthened considerably. In 2023, Saha allegedly borrowed Tk50 lakh from Chakraborty, claiming the funds would be used to purchase gold from Dubai, an early transaction investigators say helped cement the trust that would later be exploited at a far larger scale.
From a Loan to a Crore-Scale Investment
Police said Saha later convinced Chakraborty to invest in a new outlet, Trust Gold & Diamond Ltd, located at Police Plaza Concord Shopping Mall in Gulshan, promising to make him a formal business partner in the venture. Based on this assurance, Chakraborty allegedly transferred a total of Tk14.38 crore through a combination of cash payments and cheques across multiple instalments over an extended period.
Despite the scale of the investment, according to the complaint, Saha allegedly neither shared any profits from the business nor provided financial statements or records relating to how the funds had been used. When Chakraborty sought an accounting of the money, Saha allegedly responded with threats and intimidation, including death threats, a pattern investigators say escalated as the complainant pressed for transparency he was never granted. Following the complaint, a case was registered at Gulshan Police Station, and police arrested Saha on Friday morning from the Hatirjheel area of Dhaka. He was subsequently produced before a court for further legal proceedings, with police stating that the investigation continues to examine the financial transaction trail and determine whether additional individuals were involved.
A Familiar Pattern in Bangladesh’s Business Fraud Landscape
The Trust Gold & Diamond case reflects a structural vulnerability that researchers studying financial fraud in Bangladesh have repeatedly identified: informal, trust-based investment arrangements that operate entirely outside documented partnership agreements or verifiable financial oversight. Unlike the online, socially engineered scams that dominate much of Bangladesh’s cyber fraud landscape, this case fits a pattern of business fraud built on personal relationships and verbal assurances rather than digital deception, a category of fraud that researchers note is consistently under-documented despite its material and financial toll on victims.
Commentators tracking such cases point to systemic gaps that allow relationship-based fraud of this kind to flourish. Regulatory and enforcement agencies in Bangladesh have historically operated reactively rather than proactively in financial fraud cases, often intervening only after significant sums have already changed hands and documentation has either never existed or become difficult to trace. In a business culture where verbal trust and long-standing personal relationships frequently substitute for formal contracts, particularly in sectors like jewellery and gold trading where large cash transactions remain common, victims often find themselves with limited legal recourse once a promised partnership fails to materialise on paper.
What Investors Should Take From This Case
Commenting on major financial fraud cases of this nature, renowned cybercrime expert and former IPS officer Prof. Triveni Singh said investors should independently verify a company’s legal registration, financial records, ownership structure and partnership documents before committing funds to any investment or business venture. He cautioned that investing large amounts solely on the basis of personal trust or verbal assurances, however longstanding the relationship, can expose individuals to significant financial risk, since trust alone provides no legal standing once a dispute over funds and profits emerges.
For businesses and individual investors across South Asia, where informal partnership arrangements sealed with a handshake rather than a contract remain common practice, the case is a pointed reminder that the strength of a personal relationship offers no substitute for documented legal protection. As the investigation into the financial trail behind Trust Gold & Diamond’s alleged fraud continues, the outcome will likely turn less on the relationship between the two men than on whether any paper trail exists to substantiate what was promised, and what was actually delivered.
