The Prime Minister’s Office has directed the civil aviation and the home ministries to take action against a dozen of officials of Shah Amanat International Airport in Chittagong for their alleged involvement in gold smuggling.
In a report last month, the PMO also ordered to identify the godfathers and bring them to book besides the carriers.
The report says a section of unscrupulous airport officers and staff are involved in the gold smuggling process at the Chittagong airport.
Even though a handsome amount of smuggled gold was seized at the airport recently, the lion’s share crosses the airport unnoticed with the help of the security officials, airport staff and cabin crews.
Recently a personal aide of a high-ranking official helped gold-carrying passengers to leave the airport through an illegal route to avoid scanning of their luggage.
During the process, a platoon commander of Ansar assisted him. Later, the personal assistant was transferred to Barisal airport while the Ansar member to another place.
On February 6, a total of 49kg gold was recovered in an aircraft coming from Dubai. On December 11 last year, as much as 17kg gold was seized from a toilet of national flag carrier Biman Bangladesh Airlines, also coming from Dubai.
Bangladesh is used as a transit route of smuggled gold, most of which goes to India.
A number of security guards also take the bags of gold from the smugglers and carry those outside the airport.
While cleaning aircraft, some sweepers carry gold in waste baskets or bags left by the smugglers and hand over the gold to a mechanic of the engineering section of Bangladesh Biman.
A number of helpers of the Biman are also involved in gold smuggling.
When a flight of an international airliner including Bangladesh Biman lands in Chittagong airport, the gold-carrying passenger gets down and another member of the syndicate takes a domestic flight to Dhaka.
The first carrier then leaves the bag beside or under the seat of the second carrier, or inside the flight’s toilet. The cabin crews or stewards help the passengers during the process.
The passengers often cross the checking area giving reference to officers and staff of different agencies on duty at the airport or claiming themselves as their relatives. Because of maintaining prior contact, these people exchange the bags of gold while getting down the boarding bridge.
Sometimes the passengers themselves carry the gold and get out of the airport with the help of some dishonest officers and staff of the Customs, Biman and the civil aviation.
The PMO has asked the ministries to ensure exemplary punishment to these dishonest officers and staff.
“It is not true that gold smuggling has increased, but we have increased our surveillance. As a result, gold is being seized very often,” Civil Aviation Secretary Khurshed Alam Chowdhury told the Dhaka Tribune over phone yesterday.
The home secretary was not available on phone for comments.
