Muhith brushes aside BB gold adulteration report, says only 3kg was adulterated 

AMA Muhith has dismissed the customs report on the adulteration of gold in Bangladesh Bank’s vault.

Senior Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 24 July 2018, 05:30 PM
Updated : 24 July 2018, 05:30 PM

“Bangladesh Bank has no problem. The gold issue is absolutely useless,” he told reporters after a programme at the Secretariat on Tuesday.    

“We have 963kg gold and 3kg was adulterated. It’s not a problem,” he added.

The Customs Intelligence and Investigation Directorate said in a report it found anomalies while inspecting randomly sampled gold from 963kg deposited in the central bank’s vault, Bangla daily Prothom Alo reported recently.

CIID kept gold coins and rings weighing 3.3kg in the vault on Aug 23, 2015, but during the inspection it found adulteration in the gold, which caused the state a loss of over Tk 11.1 million, according to the report. 

The state suffered another loss of over Tk 19 million by showing 22 carat gold as that of 18 carat, the report claims.

CIID agents often seize large hauls of smuggled gold at airports and hand these to the Bangladesh Bank.

The central bank denied the CIID report claims, saying a clerical mistake and the use of different methods to measure the purity of the gold caused the anomalies.

State Minister for Finance and Planning MA Mannan had backed the central bank claim, but added that the government would look into the issue after the return of Muhith who was abroad.