Just within 3 days of 5.5 kg gold seizure, Customs authority at Hazrat Shahjalal International airport seized another big consignment of smuggled gold this morning. Customs official seized 20 kg smuggled gold bars from a Regent Airways flight which arrived at the airport from Kuala Lumpur at around 6 am.
Acting on a tip of, customs authority searched the toilet of the Kuala Lumpur-Dhaka flight of Regent Airlines and found 160 gold bars from there. The gold bars were left unclaimed and no one could be detained in this connection.
“We had intelligence information that a big consignment of smuggled gold will be on board of that flight today”, claimed Assistant Commissioner of Customs Wazed Ali.
Recently, Customs Authority and Airport Armed Police seized considerable amount of smuggled gold in separate incidents at the airport. With this gold haul, more than 25 kg gold has been recovered from the airport. Last Saturday, Customs officials seized 5.5 kg gold from two indian citizens coming from Abu Dhabi by another airlines. In recent months, the authority seized highest amount of smuggled gold in the history of Bangladesh and gold smuggling seems to be on rise through the airport. Today’s incident indicates that, after a couple of incidents of foiled attempt to smuggle gold into the country, smugglers choose another route via Malaysia to continue their business.
According to a recent report by a national Bangla daily of Bangladesh, not a single penny could be earned from gold importers in last two years as all the domestic demand had been fulfilled from gold smuggling.
