The Department of Customs has sent a letter to the Hong Kong customs seeking details of the consignment of a quintal of gold smuggled into Kathmandu last week.

A team from the Revenue Investigation Department on July 18 confiscated the gold that was concealed inside motorcycle brake shoes from Singamangal. The consignment was being taken away in a taxi after getting customs clearances from the Tribhuvan International Airport.

The gross weight of the smuggled gold was ascertained to be 155 kilograms, which also included electric shavers, according to officials at the mint division of the Nepal Rastra Bank, which has been entrusted with examining the metal.

However, the actual quantity of the yellow metal remains to be ascertained by the Department of Revenue Investigation (DRI) in what is one of the biggest gold seizures in the country.

Almost all gold seized during the DRI raid belonged to Ready Trade, a little known company owned by one Dipak Bhujel of Dolakha district.

“We have made correspondence with the Hong Kong customs, seeking details of the party that had sent the gold from Hong Kong illegally,” said Shovakant Poudel, director general of the Department of Customs.

“How could a quintal of gold get a pass from the Hong Kong customs?” the Department of Customs asks in its letter. The Hong Kong authorities are learnt to have acknowledged the receipt of the letter dispatched on Tuesday.

“We sought their help to find out the name of the party in Hong Kong that sent the gold to Nepal,” said Punya Bikram Khadka, spokesperson for the customs department.

“We have also shared the list of consignments that were dispatched from Hong Kong on different dates to Kathmandu and sought the details of the sending parties. We have sought their support to find out the sending parties,” Khadka told the Post.

The government is under pressure to probe the issue and has raided some suspicious places over the past one week after unearthing the smuggled gold. At least 17 persons, including one Indian and one Chinese national, have been arrested in connection with the gold smuggling and the DRI has been continuously raiding suspicious places over the past week, said officials.

According to one director at the DRI, their team on Thursday raided a house in Lazimpat believed to be that of Ling Chuwan, a Chinese national who was arrested on July 20 from the Kathmandu airport. The team nabbed Ling for interrogation as he was set to board a flight to China.

“Acting on the information that some Chinese nationals including Ling regularly visited Lazimpat, we raided the house and confiscated some boxes but there was no gold,” a DRI official said. With the support of the Nepal Police and the Armed Police Force, the DRI had earlier raided two houses at Baluwatar and Sorhakhutte and confiscated brake shoes but they contained no gold.

Over the past couple of months, the company is found to have imported various metallic goods including brake shoes, shavers, and mechanical motors that weighed nearly two tonnes.

They were brought from Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates—two major hubs of gold trade. Officials said they suspected that the gold might have been concealed in those goods, although only an investigation would confirm that. The latest seizure of smuggled gold suggests that the Tribhuvan International Airport continues to be a gateway for large-scale gold smuggling. Earlier, 33 kgs of smuggled gold was busted in 2017.

On Wednesday, a joint team of the DRI, Nepal Police and Armed Police confiscated 66 large boxes from a Sorhakhutte-based warehouse , which were found to be empty. But the size of boxes, packaging style and design were similar to what DRI had confiscated on July 18.

Some instruments recovered from these boxes could be used for making jewellery, a DRI official said. “The smugglers might have carved the gold into different kinds of ornaments and jewellery and sent them to the market,” he added.

According to the data with the Department of Customs, Ready Trade has imported consignments weighing at least 1,997 kgs from Hong Kong. The DRI team on Wednesday also raided the residence of one Rajesh Kumar Addukiya who is now believed to have left the country.

Khadka of the customs department said “his suspicious travel history to India, Hong Kong and Kathmandu over the past three months gave investigating officials some clues that he might be one of the players behind the gold smuggling case. But our probe continues.”

Khadka said that a separate team of the customs department headed by Man Bahadur Paudel is also looking into how motorcycle brake shoes containing gold got through the customs. On Thursday, Finance Minister Prakash Sharan Mahat also visited the airport customs and directed the government’s civil and security agencies to coordinate to check the malpractices.

“All agencies should be responsible for controlling such illegal activities,” said Mahat. He pledged full support from the finance ministry, saying that the government had zero tolerance of corruption.