Cleaners find $1.9M worth of gold bars in plane toilet

Ben Mutzabaugh | USA TODAY

An aircraft cleaning crew found 280 gold bars worth more than $1 million in the lavatory of a plane belonging to Middle East discount airline Flydubai.

The Daily Mail of London says "cleaners stumbled across the bullion when they were cleaning the plane's bathroom" last week after the jet flew from Dubai to the Bangladeshi capital of Dhaka.

Armed police were called onto the aircraft, where they seized the 70-pound stash of gold. The Daily Mail estimates the bars' value at £1.17 million — or about $1.9 million.

The Daily Mail writes "custom officials said they knew the bars were on board and believe the person carrying them sensed there was a police presence and abandoned the gold in the toilet of the aircraft before fleeing the scene."

It's not the first time a gold-smuggling attempt has been reported at Dhaka. The Daily Mail says "more than 100 hauls" have been seized at the airport just in the past eight months, netting authorizes about 660 pounds of gold and other precious items.

Also last week, The Daily Star newspaper of Bangladesh says officials at the Dhaka airport arrested a 35-year-old passenger arriving from Thailand on charges that he had 2 pounds of gold hidden in his laptop's battery charger.

Elsewhere in the region, Arabian Business adds "earlier this month, authorities at India's Chennai Airport seized 32kg of gold bars ... hidden in the toilet of a plane also flying from Dubai."