NIA team in Dubai to track D-company

NEW DELHI: A five-member team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) is in Dubai to investigate cases related to the involvement of Dawood Ibrahim and his cartel, better known as D-company, in running global terrorist networks and a transnational organised crime syndicate that involves smuggling and hawala extortion.

The team is looking into various aspects of money laundering and terror funding by the D-Company, additional leads of which were picked up during over 150 pan-India raids in connection with terror funding and radicalisation in the last three months.

The NIA trip also coincides with the recent visit of a high-level Indian finance team in February to firm up modalities to strengthen UAE-India trade ties. The probe agency had in November filed a chargesheet naming Dawood Ibrahim Kaskar and his associates for running a transnational organised crime syndicate that was funding terror networks through hawala, supplying drugs and arms and even generating funds through extortion.

The chargesheet said they “raised, collected and extorted huge amounts of money by threatening and by putting person(s) in fear of death or grievous hurt, for the D-Company, for the benefit of an individual terrorist (Dawood Ibrahim) in the instant case, and with the intention to threaten the security of India and create terror in the minds of the general public.”

The sleuths in Dubai would examine similar operating patterns of other drug-terror networks being run from Canada, Malaysia and elsewhere in North India, including in Punjab, Haryana and J&K.