Shah Alam Nur :
The gold smuggling into the country has reached an alarming level, as smuggled gold bars are recovered almost every day in the country’s three international airports.
Local and international crime syndicates use the Dhaka, Chittagong and Sylhet airports for gold smuggling and executing underworld financial deals, superceding all previous records, intelligence sources said.
Detectives have also found involvement of officials and staff of Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) in gold smuggling.
Over 1,000 kilogrammes of smuggled gold had been seized by different government agencies at three international airports and different other places of the country in last one year.
Besides, over 500 officials and employees of Bangladesh Biman, Civil Aviation Authorities and different other
government agencies posted at the airports had so far been arrested for their alleged involvement with smuggling activities.
A customs preventive team arrested two Malaysian nationals along with six kilogram of gold at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport here on Wednesday night. They were identified as Chankok Wai, 24, and Chen Sim Sapp, 58. Assistant Commissioner of Dhaka Customs Shahiduzzaman Sarker said the two Malaysian citizens landed at the airport from Kuala Lumpur by a Malaysian Airlines flight around 9:30pm yesterday.
The customs preventive team challenged them and recovered six gold bars worth Tk 30 million from inside their waist belts, he said.
The customs official also said that the accused at first identified themselves as Chinese citizens.
The gold is smuggled into the country from different countries in the Middle East alongside, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand through airways. Portions of the smuggled gold are smuggled out to neighbouring India, while the gold traders and other sectors in Bangladesh use the remaining portion. Smuggling of gold into Bangladesh has increased in recent years and claimed that the CID personnel and other agencies have also intensified their activities to check the smuggling activities, Moinul Khan, Director General of the Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) told The New Nation on Thursday.
He said, “The seizure of the huge quantity of smuggled gold proves that we are active against the gold smuggling activities as well as against the smugglers.” He said, “We are able to estimate only the quantity of the seized gold. But it is not possible to estimate the amount of smuggled gold, which could not be checked.”
