THE legendary love for gold in the Indian market caused its government to raise tariffs on this precious metal in April 2013, hoping to cash in on demand for gold to prop up the national exchequer by way of more taxes. Within the space of months though, what we witnessed was an excessive rise in gold-smuggling through Bangladesh into India, as was reflected in the almost routine daily seizures since then at all the three international airports of Bangladesh.Wednesday’s detention of five members, including three state-owned airline’s high-ups, unveiled the largest syndicate of gold smuggling. Though, the Bangladesh government raised the tariff on gold by nearly 20 times in the 2014-15 budget hoping to stem the flow of smuggled gold, nothing has been achieved except an increase in gold smuggling by evading the tariff and then smuggling it out to India. The use of Bangladesh as the gold smuggling route by the international mafia syndicate has unfolded the inefficiency of the country’s law enforcing agencies and detectives which rather prove their alleged involvement in the business..Detective officials said that they arrested a deputy general manager — Chief of Biman’s flight service, a captain — chief of planning and scheduling, the Manager of scheduling and a contractor of Biman and another money exchanger in a predawn raid on Wednesday for their nexus with gold smuggling rackets. The arrests were made a couple of days after a detained Biman crew member who gave a magistrate the names of people allegedly involved in gold smuggling. Quoting the detectives, several media reported that at least 12 other rackets are active in smuggling gold through the country’s premier airport and almost all the big hauls of smuggled gold were made from flights of the national carrier.Reports said in the last 17 months, Customs Intelligence seized 677 kg gold and arrested 88 people, including several staff of Biman, at the country’s three international airports. The National Board of Revenue on this July initiated a probe after the largest ever gold haul at Shahjalal Airport and recommended punitive measures against smugglers, including Biman officials, but nothing has been done by the government and it encourages the offenders to use the country as they perceive it to be a safe route for gold smuggling. Experts said the seized amount is most likely the tip of the iceberg. The unabated gold smuggling with the involvement of the top-brass of Bangladesh Biman is only denigrating the image of the country. In order to stop the illegal trafficking of the smugglers and their kingpins, in and out of the flag-carrier aircrafts, the authorities should break the rackets by conducting drives regularly and by tightening the security at the airports. The Biman high-ups should face the music of the law so that an example is made which may halt such smuggling in the future. Besides, the Border Security has to be tightened to prevent smuggling of the bullion to India.
