.jpg)
The ingenuity of Malaysian Criminals Like Jho Low, Najib Razak, Roger Ng and Local Indian Gold Smugglers Are Just Amazing.
By Mihar Dias
(C) Copyright May 2022
You have heard of Malaysian drug mules who have been caught overseas and sentenced. Some are still serving time in foreign prisons. There are no records of those who were successful in the trade to date. Only executions. The most recent one was in Singapore. A sad case indeed.
You have also read about how a young man named Jho Low managed to hoodwink high levels officials to siphon off billions.
And of course, you had followed the case of a rogue banker Roger Ng who colluded with Jho Low and Tim Leissner to convince Goldman Sachs to be involved in a scheme to raise money for Malaysia Sovereign Wealth Fund or 1MDB. He was convicted by a New York court in April.
Of course, you are familiar with the case of Bossku himself who managed to bring billions into the country in broad daylight. You need not be reminded how he convinced the whole nation that a Saudi Arabian Prince donated billions to him for his political campaigns, only to be proven otherwise by the FBI.
That the money was really from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund that he stole with help from Jho Low and other thieves.
Besides the above, there were other small-time criminals who smuggled “ketum” across the Thai border in ingenious ways to avoid being caught by border patrols. They used “Lorong tikus”, a term that has crept into our daily vocab used sparingly when you want to escape prying eyes.
Most celebrated was the father and son team from Sarawak whom the FBI finally caught up within Las Vegas for operating an illegal international bookie ring during a World Cup season a few years ago. The amount they raked in ran into hundreds of millions.
Not so well known were two Malaysians of Indian descent who allegedly smuggled 4.2kg of gold from Singapore to India’s southern city of Coimbatore recently. Most of us had never heard of the city until now.
They were arrested by Indian authorities a few weeks ago, scooting into the Coimbatore International Airport upon arrival from Singapore on the appropriately named airline, Scoot Airlines.
According to an Indian publication, The Hindu, investigators from the Revenue Intelligence Directorate (DRI) made the arrests, seizing gold bullion valued at ₹2.26 crore (RM1.28 million).
However, the smuggling was nothing ingenious. The authorities only had to check their bags. Each of the two Malaysians was found carrying 2.1kg of gold bullion in their shoulder bags.
But the fact that they were able to pass through metal detectors at a fancy technologically advanced Singapore Airport security was really amazing!
There must have been some careful planning on the part of the two smugglers to avoid being stopped by metal detectors at Singapore airport before they boarded the flight to India. No carry on bags with gold bullions could have gone through the security scanners without sounding off the alarm.
There must have been an ingenious method yet to be figured out. We have no answers. Only the two Malaysians detained in India could explain how they managed to get through Singapore’s security clearance.
Or was it a sting operation between Indian and Singaporean authorities to nab gold smugglers because the two were met and arrested by Revenue Intelligence Directorate (DRI) on arrival at Coimbatore airport in India?
Mihar Dias is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
Register at headliner.newswav.com to become one of our content writers now!
Newswav is solely an aggregation platform and hosts the content. The views expressed and content above including media (pictures, videos, etc) were provided by the author. If you have any questions about the content, copyright or other issues of the work, please contact Newswav.
