Mal wieder das Pik-Ass: Gold in Verbindung mit kriminellen Machenschaften:
Gold smugglers still up & running
SAMIK DASGUPTA & SHUBHAM MUKHERJEE
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ TUESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2004 02:30:57 AM ]
NEW DELHI: While there has been a crackdown on terrorist and terrorism related activities, including money laundering across the globe, India still seem to be playing host to it through a rampant parallel gold trade.
Smuggled gold, it may be pointed out, is often used as a barter for illegal activities.
There are various estimates of the size and scale of smuggled gold in India. According to bankers and analyst, the smuggled market of gold is almost 20% of the annual purchases of gold, which according to market sources, stands at Rs 40,000 crore. This means that as much as Rs 8,000 crore is outside the system.
Some other estimates put the total figure of smuggled gold figure in the country to be around 20 % of the entire country’s stock of 15,300 tonne. This comes to around 3,000 tonnes, valued at around Rs 2,000 crore, according to Value Reporting — Global Competitive Advantages in Banking & Finance, a book authored by Vipin Malik, an ex-RBI board member.
According to Mr Malik, gold has become one of the major means of money laundering in India. “Apart from resulting in wastage of precious foreign exchange, smuggled gold and diamonds have also become a lucrative source of illicit money transfers that are potential threat to the security and economy of the country”, he added.
In fact, gold imports (in terms of foreign trade) stand next only to oil imports. The figure of gold import in 2003 when read with those of 1994 figures are alarming enough to make one wonder as to how the policy makers have not woken up to the rising inflow of gold as an exchange medium, Mr Malik has noted.
According to analysts, the biggest threat of smuggled gold is its potential of being exchanged for non-legal and lethal purposes that can be used for anti-national activities. “Gold along with other precious stones are one of the best ways of storing black money”, they added.
According to senior bankers, the government has had a restrictive policy with regard to gold which has resulted in higher prices in the domestic market, which in turn has also resulted in hedging, smuggling and hoarding of gold.
“The government should bring in policies through banks, that would aim at tapping the cash market of gold, given the fact that gold has been the means of saving for the Indian masses through ages.
This would bring more and more illegal gold into the system,” explained a senior banker. Figures reveal India’s share of world gold stock has gone up from 7 % in 1994 to 10.9 % currently.
While India’s share in mining has been falling (a very small amount of 2 tonnes), the growth of demand in the domestic market has been met almost entirely through imports. While gold demand was 400 tonnes a year for the period 1990-95, it increased to 600 tonnes a year during the period 1994-2003. It went up to a staggering 900 tonnes a year for 2003-04.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/881877.cms
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