A total 325 gold bars weighing around 38kg and worth around Tk16.25 crore were seized by customs officials yesterday during separate drives at Chittagong’s Shah Amanat International Airport.
“Acting on a tip-off, officials recovered 260 gold bars around 7am in an abandoned condition from a toilet in the airport,” said Chittagong Customs House’s Assistant Commissioner Md Selim Reza.
Later in the day, customs officials also seized 65 more bars from two passengers who arrived in Chittagong on a Biman flight from Dubai.
The passengers – Rubel Khaki, 30, of Shariatpur, and Mohammad Hossain, 30, of Comilla – were detained; 37 bars were found from Hossain and 28 bars from Rubel.
All the gold bars were handed over to Bangladesh Bank, while the two detainees were handed over to Patenga police station, Selim Reza said.
Two cases were lodged with the Patenga station, while a divisional case was also lodged in connection with the gold seizure from the airport toilet, the customs official added.
The Chittagong airport is one of the most popular choice for gold smugglers in the country, with more than 3,000 gold bars worth about Tk250 crore being seized there in 2014 alone.
So far this year, customs officials, intelligence and law enforcement agencies have seized around 1,000 gold bars from the port city.
Syed Mukaddesh Hossain, assistant director for Chittagong’s Directorate of Customs Intelligence and Investigation, told the Dhaka Tribune that the trend and nature of the gold smuggling and seizure suggested that some unscrupulous airport employees and airlines staff including Biman personnel were involved in the trade.
On May 3, two Biman employees – Sheikh Kamal and Belal Hossain – were caught red-handed with 40 gold bars from the airport. In their confessions, they admitted that four other Biman staffs were also involved in gold smuggling.
Biman Bangladesh Airlines’ manager for Chittagong, Md Alauddin, said they had already sacked the detained employees, but were not aware about the involvement of the others.
Different investigations have found that at least 23 smuggling syndicates were operating to smuggle gold into Bangladesh; at least three of those syndicates were based in Chittagong.
Chittagong Metropolitan Police Additional Commissioner (Crime and Operation) Banaz Kumar Mazumder said they were looking into the matter and trying their best to the arrest the people involved with gold smuggling.
