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HYDERABAD: Swiss gold is being smuggled into the city in large quantities through land, sea and air, said senior officials of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) on Thursday.

While the land route from Myanmar is famous for gold smugglers, the sea route from Sri Lanka and multiple air routes are now being used by smugglers to hoodwink police and the DRI.

DRI statistics reveal that in 2019-20, around 25 cases were booked in which 162 kg of gold valued at Rs 60 crore was seized. This was much higher than the 40 kg of gold valued at Rs 13 crore seized in 2018-19.

Sources said overall gold smuggling has increased as the demand in the domestic market has risen. “Switzerland has one of the world's biggest refineries of gold. Gold mined from Africa and elsewhere in the world reaches Switzerland and gold bars are made. There is a huge demand for Swiss origin gold due to its purity. Most of the gold caught by us is of Swiss origin,” said a top DRI official.

DRI officials found the seal of Valcambi Swiss gold in the seized items and it is believed that traders buy them legally in Switzerland at low cost and smuggle it out through aerial routes.

Officially, India is one of the biggest importers of gold from Switzerland and after Switzerland, most gold seized is from UAE.

Investigations also revealed that using the sea route from Sri Lanka, the gold reaches Ramanathapuram in Tamil Nadu, before it's smuggled by road to Hyderabad.

It is smuggled from Myanmar via Guwahati to Hyderabad by land.

Last year, the DRI said that Myanmar-based gold refineries on the borders of Mizoram and Manipur are the transit points of gold smuggling.

In 2018-19, India imported around 982 tonnes of gold worth USD 32.9 billion and more than half of it was from Switzerland, according to import and export data of the Ministry of Commerce.

