Gold smuggling increases using hundi
Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh has seen a huge leap in gold smuggling to neighbouring counties. Smugglers are using the country as a safe route for smuggling of the precious metal which becomes an established fact.
Gold worth at least Tk200 crore every day and Tk73, 000 crore every year is smuggled into Bangladesh, claimed by Bangladesh Jewelers’ Association (Bajus).
Most of the transactions for the gold smuggling are done over hundi in the country as the racketeers approach people travelling to Bangladesh especially from Saudi Arabia, the United Arabia Emirates, and several other Middle Eastern countries and Singapore and give them gold bars to carry.
As a result, instead of foreign currency arriving in the country as remittance, it arrives here in the form of gold.
Finally, the hundi takes the place as a medium of exchange of those gold bars which eventually deepening the country’s forex crisis in recent years.
According to the information from Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Bangladesh loses remittance worth around $7.8 billion a year in hundi.
However, the country requires 20-40 tonnes of gold annually, a major portion of which comes from Bangladeshis returning from abroad and some is collected by smelting old gold, said the gold policy.
In 2019, the Bangladesh Bank granted distributor licences to 18 companies, including a bank to bring gold into the country legally.
But these companies are not importing gold regularly. Since 2018 0nly 500kg of gold has been imported using legitimate ways.
Under the Baggage Rules of Bangladesh, approximately 15,000-20,000 bhoris of gold are coming to the country, according to the source of Bajus.
An international passenger is allowed to bring up to 234 grams – equivalent to 20 bhoris – of solid bar, said the rule.
A large part of the gold that comes into the country legally is smuggled into India and gold bars are used to pay for stolen or undeclared goods.
Preferring anonymity, a customs official said that the gold smugglers use Bangladesh as a transit because regulations on gold import are stricter in India.
Racketeers are using our legal loop holes and bringing gold bars into Bangladesh through legal means and then smuggling those to India, he added.
Concerned sources said, gold-bars are smuggled to India through more than 50 frontier routes mainly through Jashore, Chuadanga, Darshana, Satkhira, Sherpur, Bhomra, Mongla, Dinajpur, Hili, Fulbari, Lalmonirhat and Kurigram.
Gold-bars are also smuggled to India through Sonaikandi, Haripur, Kasiadanga, Alaipur, Bagha, Mukterpur and charghat of Rajshahi district and Kironganj, Bholahat and Shaibganj of Chapainawabganj district.
It is learnt, these smugglers use both Indian and the Bangladeshi SIMs in their mobile phones and make communication with one another through SMS.
According to the data from local Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and customs office, around 150 kg of gold has been seized in Jessore during the last three years and arrested number of gold-smugglers cum carriers from frontier areas.
In this regard, BGB Jessore Battalion (49 BGB) captain Lt. Colonel Ahmed Hasan Jamil said that BGB members are working to prevent smuggling of various products including gold.
”In particular, BGB’s intelligence team is working to break the gold smuggling syndicate. Whoever is involved in this, will not be exempted,” he informed.
