In a major haul, customs officials yesterday recovered at least 906 gold bars worth around Tk47 crore from a Biman flight that landed at Shahjalal International Airport in the capital.
Acting on a tip-off, the officials swooped on seven separate washrooms of Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight No. BG 058 around 1:45pm and recovered the smuggled gold, Mostafizur Rahman, deputy director of Customs Intelligence, told the Dhaka Tribune.
The gold bars were found in 14 packets wrapped with black and blue clothes and the flight mechanical assistant, Anisuzzaman, was arrested, he said.
“Interrogating Anis and checking his cellphone, we recovered the gold bars from the washrooms,” he added.
The deputy director said during primary interrogation, Anis confessed that he had link with a smuggling gang and efforts were underway to detain the remaining gang members.
Being informed of the haul, National Board of Revenue Chairman Golam Rahman visited the spot. This is the second biggest gold haul. Earlier on July 23 last year, the customs officials recovered 124kg gold from a flight at the airport.
Kamrul Hasan, assistant commissioner of Airport Customs, told the Dhaka Tribune the Dhaka-bound flight from Dubai landed there around 9am.
“Primarily we asked all passengers to come out of the flight and found the gold bars after a thorough check of the washrooms,” he said.
Contacted, Moinul Haque Khan, director general of Customs Intelligence, told the Dhaka Tribune the airbus was about to move towards the Hanger Complex for washing and from there the cleaners would have handed over the gold bars to their smuggling gang.
The customs officials also recovered the biggest cache of 124kg gold smuggled into Bangladesh the same way.
In recent times, gold seizure from the airport has been very common. Last Monday, 20-kg gold was recovered after searching three woman bodies. A day after that, 2kg gold was recovered and finally 3kg gold was recovered on Friday.
According to sources, the Indian government has increased its import duty on gold from 10% to 15% on September last year. The Customs Director General, Moinul Khan, said due to hike in import duty on gold, smugglers were busy making some quick bucks by re-smuggling gold into India through Bangladesh.
The smugglers are bringing gold from the Middle East to Bangladesh and smuggling that into India using different routes. The official said gold rate between Dubai and Bangladesh varied a minimum of Tk8,000 per tola, and for this reason, a number of Bangladeshi gold traders were allegedly engaged in such smuggling of gold.
“We have increased our intelligence vigilance in recent times and as a result of which we have recovered smuggled gold,” he added. Although smuggled gold is being recovered, the masterminds are always remaining untraced.
According to the airport source, around 3,600 individuals including airline crew members, civil aviation staff, customs and immigration officials, members of National Security Intelligence and Ansar members had been arrested for complicity in smuggling over the last three years by APBn, Customs, Immigration and Rapid Action Battalion.
Of the arrestees, 89 were airlines employees including nine female flight attendants, 396 belong to Civil Aviation of Bangladesh, 34 were customs and immigration officials and 210 Ansar members.
