KATHMANDU, JULY 22
Three employees of Tribhuvan International Airport's Customs Office have been suspended following the discovery of significant gold smuggling incident of July 18.
An estimated 80 kg to 100 kg gold, was passed from the country's largest airport's customs department undetected.
The gold was hidden inside the brake shoes of motorbikes and shaving razor blades that was flown into the country via a Cathay Airways flight from Hong Kong.
The suspended employees include, the airport's customs officer Santosh Chand, and two non-gazetted second class officers duo Kumar Dhakal and Saroj Shrestha.
A high-level employee of the department told THT that the involvement of employees in the case seemed inevitable. "In fact, the employees were informed about possible gold smuggling in a similar consignment.
However, the employees worked recklessly to allow such a huge cache of gold pass from the customs undetected," the high-level employee said.
All the three employees were present at the office when the boxes bearing brake shoes in which gold was hidden were beingchecked. Saroj Shrestha was required to operate the gold detecting machines.
It is not sure, if the consignment actually underwent checking through the detectors under his supervision.
If it didn't, it does arouse suspicion of the employee's intention.
Similarly, Kumar Dhakal was required to manually check the boxes in the consignment looking for any kind of contraband. "The CCTV footage at the customs shows that Dhakal opened the boxes, but it is surprising he didn't see such a large cache of gold hidden there. Officer Chand was missing from office at that time. It was his duty to verify all the products and clear them. Whether he missed his duty hour deliberately or not is a subject of investigation," the source added.
Chand's suspension order came from the Ministry of Finance on the recommendation of the Department of Customs.
A probe committee under the leadership of Man Bahadur Paudel, director of Department of Revenue Investigation, will be questioning the suspended employees to find the truth about the racket.
Meanwhile, authorities are still clueless about who actually owns the gold as none of the 10 arrestees in the case have admitted the gold is theirs.
A version of this article appears in the print on July 23, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.
