Bangladesh customs hit gold bonanza in unlikely places

Bangladesh detectives hit the jackpot when they stopped Mohammad Belal at Chittagong airport carrying some surprising excess baggage.

Under questioning, the 37-year-old admitted he had a dozen chunks of gold weighing 1.4 kilogrammes, or three pounds, stashed in his rectum.

Gold smuggling in Bangladesh is at a record high, officials say, with the country emerging as a major route into neighbouring India, which has slapped high taxes on gold imports.

Authorities have seized 1.1 tonnes of the precious metal at airports in the past three years - an unprecedented haul.

Investigators believe it is the tip of a golden iceberg.

They say it is bought by jewellers or smuggled into India, the world's biggest buyer of gold, and is also bankrolling a booming trade in drugs and illegal cattle.

As monitoring has been stepped up, barely a day passes without another seizure.

Detectives on Wednesday discovered 13 stone-sized gold tablets hidden in the wig of a 45-year-man as he passed through Dhaka's international airport.

Smugglers are increasingly resorting to more drastic methods to evade detection, officials say.

"Hiding gold bars in electronic appliances, wheelchairs or in toys has become old tactics. Now they are increasingly using their rectum to carry gold," Moinul Khan, Bangladesh's customs intelligence chief, told AFP.

"We give them a lungi (cloth worn by men around the waist) and a polythene bag, ask them to defecate and there comes gold from the anus. Some women were even found having carried gold in their vaginas."

More than 100 people - mostly Bangladeshi migrant workers - have been arrested since 2014 for gold smuggling at the country's three international airports, police say.

Khan said smuggling networks often included air hostesses, airport ground staff and cleaners and corrupt security personnel.

"They have a huge network involving a lot of people," he said.

Despite heightened vigilance plenty of gold is finding its way onto the black market, Khan said.

An aide to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina last year told the Bangladesh Jewellers Samitee, a lobby group representing local jewellery shops, that authorities could only expect to detect 10 per cent of the gold smuggled through its porous borders.

Bangladesh - a low-lying nation on the Bay of Bengal - does not have any gold mines of its own and relies on imports to fashion rings and other treasures for its booming middle class.

The country has imposed strict quotas and huge customs duties on gold, effectively choking off legal bullion imports for flourishing jewellery outlets.

(This article has not been edited by DNA's editorial team and is auto-generated from an agency feed.)