The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) arrested two employees of one of India’s largest gold jewellery exporters listed on the bourses on charges of smuggling out gold worth several crores from the company’s facility at the Cochin Special Economic Zone (CSEZ).
The company’s exim manager in CSEZ, who hails from Bangalore, and its general manager, who is a native of Manarkad near Kottayam, landed in the DRI net after its sleuths swooped on the exim manager last week while he was allegedly shipping out unaccounted gold ingot weighing a kilogram from the SEZ.
On interrogation, he told the agency that he had been delivering gold bars to one of the company’s owners almost every month at the general manager’s instructions.
A court on Saturday remanded the arrested duo in judicial custody for two weeks.
The Bangalore-based company, which had been importing pure gold and exporting gold coins at its SEZ facility, had laid off its employees at the CSEZ after the Union Ministry of Commerce through its missive no. D12/4/2013-SEZ had asked SEZ firms transacting in gold without any value addition to stop doing so from April 30.
