110 gold bars seized at Dhaka airport

By

Sheuli Akter

110 gold bars weighing 12 kg have been seized at Bangladesh’s main airport in the capital Dhaka.

Shahiduzzaman Sarkar, assistant commissioner of customs, told local media that the Customs Intelligence Department personnel from a flight of local Regent Airways, which flew in from Bangkok through Chittagong seized the gold bars.

He said two people were nabbed in connection with the seizure of gold bars worth 60 million taka (c.USD 750,000).

Sarkar said the Regent Airways flight landed at Bangladesh’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka from Chittagong, 242 km skutheast of Dhaka.

Acting on a tip off, he said they conducted a search and found the bars inside the flight on Tuesday evening.

Organized gangs of local and foreign smugglers are often blamed for increasingly using Bangladesh as a route for the illegal transportation of gold, foreign currencies, contraband drugs and medicines.

In recent months huge gold bars have been recovered by Bangladesh officials while they were being smuggled into the country by airports.

Sheuli Akter

Sheuli Akter, from Bangladesh, is a Special Correspondent and Editor of NsNewsWire, (Bangladesh’s First Press Newswire).  Previously she had worked for Bangladesh’ top news agency, United News of Bangladesh (UNB) and top newspaper (now defunct) The Bangladesh Observer. She also gained an honourable mention in the first ever World Media Summit WMS Awards for ‘Exemplary News Professionals in Developing Countries’, receiving the award in Beijing in January 2015.