New Delhi: Three years after the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) busted a gold export racket allegedly aided by customs officials at Chennai International Airport, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has booked four customs officials, since suspended, and five other individuals, including businessmen, in the case.
The initial investigation was conducted by the DRI and its report is the basis of the CBI’s FIR.
According to the DRI, three businessmen named in the FIR acquired gold to the tune of 218 kg from HDFC Bank on terms to export jewellery made from it. But, the agency alleges, they used just around 10-12 percent of the precious metal in the jewellery for export out of the country, while the rest was sold illegally.
The DRI’s case was that the accused got gold under the Duty-Free Import Authorisation scheme, which mandates that the imported metal be converted into 22-carat ornaments for re-export. Such gold is available through nominated agencies only.
Further, the customs officials allegedly involved helped pass off the consignments of jewellery made of copper and coated with gold as gold exports and took bribe for the same. The money earned from the racket by the three accused, named Deepak Siroya, Santosh Kothari and Sunil Parmar, was sent to Dubai through hawala channels, claims the DRI.
The customs officials named in the FIR are J. Suresh Kumar, Alok Shukla and P. Thulasi Ram—all of the rank of superintendent in the customs department—as well as an appraiser named N. Samuel Deepak Avinash.
All four were suspended from the customs department at different stages in 2022 before it wrote to the CBI for an investigation following the DRI’s busting of the alleged racket.
Based on the DRI’s investigation, the CBI opened a preliminary inquiry in June 2023 before converting it into a regular case on 20 August this year.
Weight discrepancy blew whistle
It was on 31 January 2022, that the air cargo intelligence unit of the customs department stopped an export consignment claimed to be of gold jewellery in its shipping bill submitted by the exporter, a company named Sunil Jewellery.
The bill claimed the package contained 449 pieces of bangles weighing approximately 11.28 kg—compared to the actual weight of 10.80 kg observed by customs officials during examination.
After its seizure, the consignment was taken over by the DRI for investigation, which found that the bangles in the shipment were made of copper and coated with gold, contrary to the claims in the bill. After the revelation, the DRI recalled one more consignment sent the same day and found it to be made of copper as well.
In the subsequent investigation, the DRI found that a trio of businessmen named Deepak Siroya of Siroya Jewellers, Sunil Parmar of Sunil Jewellery and Santosh Kothari of another company named Shree Kalyan Jewellery was allegedly behind the syndicate and beneficiaries of its proceeds. Siroya was pinned as the mastermind of the racket that was operational between November 2020 and January 2022.
According to the DRI, Siroya stated to the directorate that all the gold involved was procured from an HDFC Bank branch in Mumbai in the name of a firm named Brinks Logistics, and was purchased as a source of jewellery for export purposes.
During his examination, Siroya allegedly admitted that customs department officials played a central role in the racket, examining and passing the consignments with fraudulent bills. For this purpose, he had approached A. Mariappan, a custom house agent or CHA, to bring a suitable customs officer to the syndicate to “look after” the matter.
CHAs are licensed professionals empowered to facilitate work with businesses and customs authorities on procedures for international trade.
Mariappan, he claimed, introduced him to Suresh Kumar, who was posted as a jewellery expert in the air cargo complex at the Chennai airport up to October 2021 and then his replacement, Deepak Avinash, an appraising officer. Siroya also named another customs official, Alok Shukla, as having helped him in export of the fake gold jewellery consignments. Avinash was allegedly aided by Ram in assessment, states the DRI.
“Also, Deepak Siroya disclosed that payments to the customs officers were made at the rate of Rs 50 per gram of fake jewellery exported, and that these payments were made directly in the form of cash delivered to their cars at ACC, Chennai,” the customs department said in its communication to the CBI.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)