Destiny group was a Bangladeshi

multilevel marketing Multi-level marketing (MLM), also called network marketing or pyramid selling, is a controversial marketing strategy for the sale of products or services in which the revenue of the MLM company is derived from a non-salaried workforce selling th ...

company that operated as a

Pyramid scheme A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products. As recruiting multiplies, recruiting becomes quickly im ...

History

Destiny started out as a multilevel marketing company. It grew to own a newspaper and television channel. It advertised heavily and was one of the major sponsors of Bangladesh's 40th independence celebration. It sold 50 million trees in its plantation business that did not exist, with investors being shown pictures of trees in

Sundarban Sundarbans (pronounced ) is a mangrove area in the delta formed by the confluence of the Padma, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers in the Bay of Bengal. It spans the area from the Baleswar River in Bangladesh's division of Khulna to the Hooghly Ri ...

forest. The trees were sold to 1.7 million investors but according to an anti-corruption commission only 5.3 percent of those trees existed. In 2014, Destiny distributors were trying to get a new license for their multilevel marketing activities.

Investigations

Reports of irregularities in the company prompted the Anti-Corruption Commission and other government agencies to launch investigations of the company. The ACC investigation has found 722 bank accounts in a number of banks under the name of 37 companies of Destiny Group. Bangladesh Bank has reported that Destiny Group had laundered around 51.13 billion

Bangladeshi taka The Bangladeshi taka ( bn, টাকা, currency sign, sign: , ISO 4217, code: BDT, Short form (linguistics), short form: Tk) is the currency of the Bangladesh, People's Republic of Bangladesh. In Unicode, it is encoded at . Issuance of ban ...

($748M as of 2006) from 2002 to 2006 through the accounts of its three sister concerns-Destiny 2000 Limited, Destiny Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited, and Destiny Tree Plantation Limited. In May 2014, ACC filed money laundering cases against 51 executives of the company. The ACC has impounded 6.31 billion taka ($80.4M as of 2016) worth of assets of the company. Justice

Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury Moyeenul Islam Chowdhury is a retired judge of the Bangladesh High Court. Early life Chowdhury was born on 9 January 1953 in Sylhet, East Pakistan. completed his law degree, bachelors, and masters in art from the University of Dhaka. Career On ...

was appointed chairman of Destiny Group on 1 September 2022 on a High Court order.

References

{{Reflist, 30em Mass media companies of Bangladesh Companies based in Dhaka Pyramid and Ponzi schemes