Confessions of a Duty-Free Shop Employee

“The biggest headache for duty-free staff is requisitions from state chief ministers’ offices… They usually ask for premium bottles of Scotch.”

Government-owned duty-free shops are part of a huge inland smuggling racket. Though only international passengers are allowed inside, people with enough power in the right places can procure anything from inside for a small consideration. We usually wait for familiar faces to come into the store. Even if they don’t buy, we request them to carry items outside from where a contact collects the goods.

There is tremendous demand for Scotch, chocolates, perfumes and electronic consumer durables. There is a tacit agreement between enforcement agencies and us; we tip them off if a passenger buys a high-value product liable for partial duty. Some customers actually ask if items can be billed inside and collected in the parking lot to save customs duty.

We often make bills in the names of unwitting passengers. All purchases are recorded against passport numbers, so we simply repeat the same numbers when we are smuggling stuff. Once, an assistant entered a godman’s passport number and made an invoice for three whisky bottles. Of course, the bottles went to someone else, but the excise department caught the salesman a few weeks later while making a random check on our liquor stocks.

The biggest headache for duty-free staff is requisitions from state chief ministers’ offices and protocol departments. They usually ask for premium bottles of Scotch using the excuse of entertaining state guests. A duty-paid bottle of single malt costs at least Rs 3,500 whereas in a duty-free, it’s just Rs 1,500 for a one-litre bottle.

One Karnataka chief minister and a Maharashtra home minister had a fetish for Black Label Scotch. Their quota was three bottles a week. If we missed a week then officials from the state excise, commercial tax or police department would harass us. The list of people we have to oblige is so long that sometimes we run out of stock.

Private airports will help stop this leakage of revenues. Of course, it’ll continue in government-owned duty-free shops. But then, those who make the laws are the ones who want everything duty-free.

(The employee has served at most duty-free shops in major international airports across the country)

As told to Anil Budur Lulla

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