BD Foods' Heroin Smuggling: Investigators trace Hundi operation

Shariful Islam

Investigators probing heroin smuggling to the UK has found that BD Foods Ltd had brought Tk 80-90 lakh every month since 1995 up to March 2005 into the country from various foreign countries including the UK through hundi.

Sources said while checking banking information of 12 business houses, including BD Foods Ltd and its nine sister concerns, the investigators unearthed the transaction of the huge amount of illegal money.

Detained BD Foods Chairman Badruddoza Chowdhury Momen also admitted to bringing the money through hundi when investigators asked him during remand about the inconsistencies between his earnings and capital.

Mainuddin, manager of BD Foods Ltd and a close relative of Badruddoza, used to handle the hundi business.

"The investigators will soon start checking minutely the banking information of the 12 companies to find out if any other shoddy transaction was made by the business houses," a source said.

Apart from smuggling heroin, the BD Foods used to ship dried fish and beef--hiding them in the consignments of legitimate items like vegetables and frozen fish--to different foreign countries although it had no official permission for such exports.

Badruddoza would sell the exportable items at unusually lesser prices as he earned a huge amount of money from smuggling heroin and selling items for which he had no export permission.

Kazi Zafar Reza, proprietor of Rainbow Enterprise, already confessed to a magistrate that he started smuggling heroin in vegetable consignments after incurring a "huge loss" in his legitimate vegetable export business.

Zafar, who confessed to smuggling 154kg heroin to the UK, also said his vegetable export business could not compete with the BD Foods that used to sell vegetables at a lower price since its vegetables were only a cover for heroin smuggling.

BD Foods top boss Badruddoza was arrested on May 14 after two of his accomplices--Nazmul Haider Buyiyan Bulbul, a former BD Foods official, and his cohort Mokhlesur Rahman Nayan, a cargo handler--confessed to having smuggled 22.5kg heroin to the UK at his command.

A five-member team comprising representatives of the Criminal Investigation Department, Rapid Action Battalion, Special Branch of police, Bangladesh Bank and the Department of Narcotics Control is coordinating the investigations.

The UK customs in May 2005 accused five Bangladeshi business firms, including BD Foods Ltd, of smuggling heroin in the guise of food, toiletries, cosmetics and floor tiles.