Half a tonne of Apan's gold now with BB

Customs intelligence has deposited 567.54kg of gold and 7,369 pieces of diamond they confiscated from Apan Jewellers' with Bangladesh Bank yesterday.

Five teams of Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate (CIID) held the gold and diamonds from five outlets of Apan in Gulshan, Uttara, Mouchak and Shimanto Square as its authorities could not produce valid documents for the ornaments.

There was no transparency regarding the gold worth about Tk 274.35 crore and diamonds worth around Tk 10 crore, said CIID Director General Moinul Khan.

CIID on May 14 and 15 primarily seized 498kg of gold and kept the ornaments at the respective outlets in accordance with the rules, and asked Apan owners to bring the documents to the CIID on May 17. The owners have not been able to produce the documents.

The rest of the gold was found by CIID officials yesterday.

Meanwhile, The CIID officials recently handed over 2.3kg of the gold to customers who had given their ornaments to Apan to have them refurbished.

As the officials took the gold and diamonds from the outlets yesterday, several customers told reporters that they lost their money by ordering from Apan.

A woman at Shimanto Square outlet said she ordered gold ornaments for her niece's wedding. “We did not get the gold. What is our fault?” she asked.

A customer at the Gulshan outlet also said wedding of a relative had to be postponed as Apan didn't deliver the gold ornaments.

Asked, Moinul said, "A portion of the confiscated gold was kept aside for those who ordered and paid for the gold. But that amount would only be a tiny portion of what we confiscated." He said after they figure out the proper procedure, they would give the people the gold they paid for.

On Saturday night, Moinul said Apan owners came up with photocopied documents of about 125kgs of gold saying that they purchased the gold from people who brought it into the country under the baggage rule.

Gold brought in under the baggage rule are for personal consumption; it cannot be used for commercial purpose. Apan owners somehow collected the documents in an attempt to hide their misdeeds, said the top CIID official.

He added that the papers showed that one person travelled abroad 18 times in five months and brought 200 grams of gold each time.

“We will investigate the matter,” he said.

People, who had paid Apan for ornaments, talking to customs officials about when they would have their jewelleries. Photo: Palash Khan

The CIID official in May went for the crackdown amid allegation by one of the Banani rape victims that the prime accused Ahmed Shafat, son of one of the owners of Apan Jewellers, bragged about being a gold smuggler.

Shafat and the four other accused also boasted about their wealth and said police would not touch them when the two girls warned that they would go to the law enforcers, according to the testimony of one of the two girls.

Invited to Shafat's birthday party on March 28, the two girls went to The Raintree Dhaka around 9:00pm. After the party ended around midnight, Shafat and his friend Nayem Ashraf alias Halim raped them in two rooms, alleged one of the two girls who filed the case.

Shafat, and Nayem confessed to raping the girls while three other accused, Shafat's driver Billal Hossain, bodyguard Rahmat and the victims' friend, Shadman Sakif, admitted their involvement in the incident.

Meanwhile, National Human Rights Commission's (NHRC) committee formed to look into the matter quizzed the Deputy Commissioner (Gulshan) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police Mostaque Ahmed and Officer-in-Charge of Banani Police Station BM Farman yesterday morning.

“We asked them how police came to know about the case, how the victims came to the police station, and how police recorded the case…” Nazrul Islam, convener of the committee, told The Daily Star.