The Customs Department is examining whether some people working on a “request basis” for the consulate of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) here had used forged documents to illegally import gold into the country in diplomatic air cargo consignments from the Gulf on at least eight occasions since January.
The examination of one such consignment in the presence of UAE officials on July 3 had revealed 30 kg of gold concealed in imported piping. The discovery has triggered a major investigation that spanned international borders.
A senior consulate official has reportedly informed Customs enforcers that he was willing to testify before a magistrate voluntarily that the documents produced for clearing the consignment were counterfeit.
Signatures
He has also questioned the authenticity of the signatures on the papers submitted to get cargo clearance through the diplomatic green channel.
The official had spoken to investigators for over 12 hours recently at the instance of his superiors. Investigators said they hoped the official would give a sworn statement under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code. Such a statement would have legal sanctity even if the UAE posted the official out of the country.
The current phase of the probe appeared focussed more on a “woman respondent” who had contacted a Customs official at the air cargo complex here last week.
They said she had attempted to lobby for the clearance of the shipment containing the contraband allegedly without the sanction or knowledge of the UAE official to whom the cargo was addressed.
Denies charge
The woman has denied the charge. In her anticipatory bail plea in the High Court, she claimed that she had acted with the full authority of the UAE consulate.
The optics of the woman respondent in the smuggling case interacting with top government officials and her controversial posting in a subsidiary of the IT Department recently has, arguably, not augured well for the government's public image in the run-up to the local body elections later this year.
Opposition criticism that the woman respondent in the smuggling case was close to the Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s office had reportedly led to the displacement of M. Sivasankar as Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, and Principal Secretary, IT Department.
Meanwhile, the Customs Department denied media reports that Mr. Sivasankar was “a person of interest in the smuggling case inquiry.