How has it been made possible? Are we to believe that the relevant authorities and tax officials are completely unaware about this corrupt practice for some thirty years?
The shocking truth came into the limelight recently when a member of a high-profile jewellery businessman’s son was exposed for his alleged connection with a rape case. However, the blessing in disguise in the scandal is that it has also had shed light on the issues of gold import and illegal jewellery business in the country. Had the rape case not resulted in such unprecedented sensation, things would have likely continued in the same old inefficient manner. Furthermore, it shows our law enforcers have become comparatively more reactive rather than proactive in busting criminals.
The Central Bank’s final decision on importing gold last year was that Bangladesh nationals will no longer be allowed to bring in more than 200 grams of gold under ‘baggage rules’, but long before that declaration came gold smuggling had become rampant in the country. Before the revision, the highest permissible amount was 300 grams under the rules. One of the key reasons for the thriving of gold smuggling is because the country had no clear-cut policy with gold import relating to jewellers’ and other businesses.
We fail to understand, why the government is not realizing that a very low gold import duty compared to that in India has been encouraging smugglers to import gold to Bangladesh and then smuggle it out to India. Even more mysterious is that with its self-contradicting guidelines, it has made Bangladesh into a lucrative route of gold smuggling. Between July 2013 and December 2014, in less than two years, more than 1,667 pounds (756 kg) of gold was seized from planes and passengers at Bangladesh’s airports, worth a total of $36 million. The scale of unrecorded smuggling together in the last couple of years is even bigger.
The point, however, both our jewellery industry and import of gold have been unregulated and unchecked for too long. The jewellers coupled with the smuggling syndicate have become so powerful that they have been audaciously conducting their businesses based on illegally imported or smuggled gold. That said — the business houses should have a government regulated specified limit for storing and trading in gold and should be held accountable and penalised for all unaccountable extra quantity.
We cannot say that the jewellery business in Bangladesh is capable of running entirely lawfully as because no legal sources of getting gold for the jewellery business is available in Bangladesh. Import of gold is illegal in the country.
So government has to frame a gold import policy for jewellery business so that the business is not victimised by corrupt ones in every department of government. There is huge profit in this business, but the jewellery businessmen are all subject to big exploitation by politically powerful ones.
