246 kg seized in 7 months, Myanmar new top route for gold smugglers

WHILE GOLD seizures have come down this fiscal year, Myanmar has replaced traditional routes, such as Dubai, Thailand, Bangladesh and Nepal, as the top country for smuggling the yellow metal into India, according to customs data accessed by The Indian Express. The data shows that the customs department seized 246 kg of gold smuggled from Myanmar and 151 kg from Dubai in the first seven months of the current fiscal year — data for 2016-17 is available only till last October. In 2015-16, data shows, the department seized about 1,417 kg of gold smuggled from Dubai and 232 kg from Myanmar.
The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) has also acknowledged in a recent report that gold continues to be “a concern as a major item of smuggling” and that “the porous Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur has seen a consistent rise” in gold smuggling.
“A number of cases were detected which points to an organised channel, whereby smuggled gold is brought clandestinely across the land border, moved to intermediate points such as Guwahati and Siliguri by road, often defaced or melted to obliterate foreign markings and further transported to Kolkata/Mumbai/ Chennai by rail/air,” said the DRI report.
Officials said the shift to Myanmar is because insurgency movements provide support to illegal handling of large quantities of gold. Apart from this, they said, improved monitoring of the air route has shifted smuggling to the trans-border road route.
“The Indo-Nepal border is better



patrolled, and the terrain is not as easy as that of Myanmar-Bangladesh for smuggling goods into Kolkata, which has a traditional jewellery-making base. The availability of trains to the main markets in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi helps move the gold, at times as jewellery or after melting,” said a customs official.
In the last one year, the DRI has booked several cases pertaining to smuggling of gold through Moreh, a town on the Indo-Myanmar border in Manipur.
In September 2016, the DRI arrested a Guwahati-based bullion trader with 10 kg of gold at Delhi airport. The agency subsequently found that the racket, allegedly headed by the trader, smuggled around 7,000 kg of gold worth more than Rs 2,000 crore through the Indo-Myanmar border in the last two-and-a-half years.
According to official sources, the country’s enforcement agencies seized at least 1,025 kg of gold worth over Rs 350 crore in the first ten months of this fiscal year.
Smuggling of gold remains a lucrative business due to high profit margins, said officials.
According to intelligence agencies, the average price difference of gold between the London Metal Exchange and Mumbai is around Rs 3.8 lakh per kg. The agencies have estimated that on an average, a smuggler makes a profit of Rs 90,000 to Rs 1.1 lakh per kg of smuggled gold after deducting a hawala cost of Rs 10,000, premium of another Rs 10,000 and transportation cost of Rs 2.5-2.7 lakh per kg, including carrier expenses, tickets and other expenses incurred by operators.