Nepal’s former prince Paras, kingpin of fake currency: ATS racket

Nepal ex-prince kingpin of fake notes racket?
Suchandana Gupta, TNN 1 September 2009

BHOPAL: The Madhya Pradesh anti-terror squad on Monday arrested two Nepalese with fake Indian currency notes interrogated, made the startling disclosure that the kingpin of the racket was none other than Nepal’s former crown prince, Paras, as well as the son of a former Nepalese minister, Salim Mian Ansari. ( Watch Video )

In fact, Rajesh Gupta and Ateeq Ahmad, both Nepalese citizens, alleged that former King Gyanendra Singh’s son was working with Pakistan’s ISI and Mumbai underworld don, Dawood Ibrahim, reportedly hiding in Karachi. Salim Mian Ansari is a former forest minister of that country.

Both Gupta (42) and Ahmad (43) were trying to board a Gorakhpur-bound train at Bhopal railway station on Saturday when the cops swooped down on them, and caught them with 22 FICN of Rs 500 denomination. The notes were printed in Nepal.

“This is the first time we have caught fake note smugglers red-handed in Madhya Pradesh,” said deputy inspector general, ATS, Pawan Shrivastava. Sources in the state police headquarters said that the finance ministry and Central investigating agencies have been informed of the stunning disclosures made by the arrested Nepali citizens.

The role of Paras and Yunus Ansari is being further probed. Both Gupta and Ahmad have told the police that Ansari is the main link to ISI and D-company in Nepal. He is also a business partner of King Gyanendra’s son Paras. Intelligence agencies in India have always been intrigued about the exact businesses of Ansari.

Rajesh and Ahmad are businessmen who are considered the third level operators in the FICN racket. Police said there are five-levels in the operation starting with the masterminds based in Pakistan and Nepal. The last line is mostly petty criminals in India’s metros and other cities. Ahmad was a resident of Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh. Twelve years ago, he married a girl in Nepal and got the citizenship of the Himalayan state. He settled sown in Birganj, the largest town in Nepal’s Terai region in the south-east part of the country close to Raxaul. Raxaul and Birganj have been known to be the transit points of FICN. Gupta, too, lives in Kathmandu.

“It’s an intricate network. The ISI has recruited large number of agents like Gupta and Ahmad who push crores of fake currency notes across the open borders of Nepal,” said ATS chief Shrivastava. Rajesh Gupta and Ateeq Ahmad brought the fake currency notes to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They were in touch with at least 40 persons in Madhya Pradesh who work as their last link in the racket. The two have been remanded in police custody until September 8.

Pakistan procuring paper from London to make fake Indian notes

RBI to withdraw 1996, 2000 currency notes

Pak procuring paper from London to make fake Indian notes
29 Aug 2008, 0041 hrs IST, Pradeep Thakur & Vishwa Mohan,TNN

NEW DELHI: With Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh proving to be active partners in probing fake Indian currency notes (FICN) related cases, India has recently traced Pakistan’s London connection in printing and circulation of counterfeit notes.

Although the role of Pakistani intelligence agency ISI in printing and circulation of FICN has never been a secret, sleuths recently found that the spy agency had, of late, impressed upon the government in Islamabad to import additional currency-standard printing paper from companies located in London to pursue its nefarious designs in India.

Referring to recent probes done in coordination with sleuths of Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh, officials pointed out that Pakistan has been procuring currency-standard printing paper in huge quantities from London-based companies — much higher than normal requirement of the country for printing its own currency — for diverting it to print FICN.

This is, however, only one aspect of Pakistan’s direct involvement in the FICN racket which is being carried out by using the network of underworld kingpin Dawood Ibrahim not only in India but also in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal in close association with different terror outfits. The ISI has, in fact, been using state air-carrier Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) to transport counterfeit currency to its conduits in Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, sources in investigating agencies said.

The modus operandi of the ISI was revealed by two Nepali counterfeit currency traffickers who were arrested by Thailand police in October last year. During interrogation, the accused disclosed that they were working for a prominent Nepali businessman who was the son of a former minister in King Gyanendra’s regime. “The fact that Nepali territory is being used by Pakistanis to smuggle counterfeit currency is well known. The first such expose was made when Pakistani diplomats were caught distributing FICN in Nepal,” an official said.

Recent arrests made in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh also pointed to Pakistan’s connection in the circulation of FICN.

One Naushad Alam Khan, arrested in Dhaka on April 24 with FICN worth Rs 50 lakh, had admitted his direct link with HuJI (Bangladesh) chief Mufti Abdul Hannan. It was found that both Khan and Hannan had fought for Taliban in Afghanistan.

Sri Lankan police had arrested two Pakistani nationals and a local in Colombo and seized a large amount of counterfeit Indian currency from them on July 8. It was found during the probe that both of them had arrived from Karachi.

All those arrested in neighbouring countries had also disclosed that the ISI had been using its printing facilities in Quetta, Baluchistan, to print FICN before transporting it to different countries for its onward push into India.

Besides Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, counterfeit currency is also sent to Thailand before it finally makes its way to India using the south-east Asian network of Dawood.

Dawood funding SIMI’s Islamic terror campaign In India, says intelligence

Dawood funding SIMI terror campaign, says intelligence
22 Aug 2008, 0040 hrs IST, Vishwa Mohan,TNN

NEW DELHI: Fugitive Mumbai mafiosi Dawood Ibrahim has been identified as one of those funding banned jihadi outfit SIMI’s terror campaign against India, in what is seen as disturbing disclosure of the jihadi-underworld nexus.

According to a dossier prepared by intelligence agencies, Dawood, who masterminded the 1993 serial blasts in Mumbai, has been routing funds to SIMI through an aeronautical engineer, C A M Basheer, from Kerala. Said to be SIMI’s chief fundraiser, Basheer, who looked after the operations of the banned outfit in Kerala, is now holed up somewhere in Saudi Arabia. The matter came up for discussion in a high-level meeting on SIMI in the wake of new facts which emerged during the probe of Ahmedabad serial blasts.
Though SIMI’s footprints had been traced in earlier terror incidents, including Mumbai serial blasts and Malegaon bombings as well, the focus this time was on its 50 fronts and their funding which is being handled by Basheer through his network.

It was also specifically mentioned in the meeting that Basheer, who hails from Aluva in Ernakulam district, had made Kerala one of the strongest bases of SIMI — a fact which also came to light after the arrest of 10 terrorists, including Mufti Abu Bashar of Azamgarh, UP, in connection with the Ahmedabad serial blasts.

Dawood’s links should not surprise the counter-terror agencies. Those tracking the chief of the notorious D-Company are sure that Pakistan’s ISI — which instigated the don, tapping into the gang’s anger against the communal riots in the city to organise the terrorist aggression against Mumbai in 1993 — has since fully co-opted him into its battle against India. But evidence that SIMI has access to the underworld’s huge coffers should deepen worries about the jihadi outfit whose resilience and reach has come as a surprise.

Basheer went underground in 2001 when the outfit was first banned. His dossier reveals that he had been funding not only SIMI but also most of its fronts utilizing his links with Dawood and his cronies in the Gulf countries by creating a corpus under “Muslim Defence Fund”.

After completing his aeronautical engineering course from Cochin University, Basheer had joined a flight training institute in Bangalore in the 1980s. Later, he shifted to Mumbai where he developed his links with underworld operatives. Attended by top officials from states, Intelligence Bureau and home ministry, the meeting on Thursday also outlined the modalities to go all out against these fronts by keeping records of the activities of each and every individual associated with the groups.

“Representatives of states were asked to gather concrete evidence against these fronts so that these can be banned like their parent body SIMI,” said a senior official.

It was also decided in the meeting that the home ministry would soon write to UP — where 34 districts are considered to be sensitive as far as activities of SIMI are concerned — urging it to ban the outfit.

The move assumes significance in view of Mayawati government’s willingness to bring SIMI in the banned category, provided the state gets sufficient evidence. It is learnt that the home ministry would provide the state with evidence which has been emerging during the course of Ahmedabad and Jaipur serial blasts probe — making a strong case for SIMI’s ban in UP which, incidentally, also traced the outfit’s footprints in bomb blasts in Faizabad, Lucknow and Varanasi. It was disclosed in the meeting that while four of the total 50 SIMI fronts were working at an all-India level, 46 of them were active in seven states and Delhi.

The maximum 23 of them are active in Kerala followed by eight in Maharashtra, seven in West Bengal, three in Bihar, two in UP and one each in Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and Delhi. Though the respective state police have been keeping watch on these fronts, they — as home ministry feels — are not “watchful enough” to crack evidence of their direct links with SIMI. “After all, one has to have concrete evidence to ban them under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and subsequently prove it in the courts,” said a senior officer.

ISI flooding fake notes into India

Fake notes flowing into India
7 Jun, 2008, 1736 hrs IST, TNN

CHENNAI: Pakistan’s ISI has found a better way to destabilise the booming Indian economy. Their agents based in the Middle East are recruiting people to carry counterfeit currency to India through Colombo.

The currency is printed in small printing units in Islamabad. The law enforcement agencies have got vital clues regarding the involvement of ISI in the counterfeit currency racket operating in India. They also suspect the role of dreaded don, Dawood Ibrahim.

“We have no documentary proof to substantiate this. However, we have some specific intelligence connecting Dawood Ibrahim and the ISI to the counterfeit currency racket based in Pakistan and the Middle East, which releases crores worth of fake notes to India through Colombo,” a senior official of a law enforcement agency told TOI.

The racket is so well-organized that they source the paper from a company in London. This is the same place from which the Indian government is also procuring the paper. They then duplicate the Indian rupee to utmost perfection. “How they managed to spot the same company which supplies the paper to us is still a mystery. They also managed to produce notes which are almost similar to our currency . The laymen cannot distinguish the fakes produced in Pakistan from the original. Even officials from RBI have found it difficult to distinguish between these fakes and originals,” the official said.

Several reports of seizure of Pakistan-produced fake notes in Tamil Nadu and Kerala indicate a large scale flow of fake currency to the Indian market. “The standard operational procedure of the racket is to route the fake currency consignments first to the Middle East and then to Colombo before sending it to major entry points like Chennai and Kochi. The currency notes with face value of several crores are sent in one consignment to Colombo. The racket has storage facilities in Colombo. So they store the bundles there and send that to India in small consignments. They usually send around Rs 25 lakh worth notes in one consignment,” another official said.

The racket mainly uses the erstwhile gold carriers to smuggle fake currency. “The carriers once used by gold smugglers have a good base in the Middle East. These carriers are now low on business as gold smuggling has come down heavily following duty relaxation. So the racket finds it easy to recruit these carriers to smuggle counterfeit currency .

The carriers are not really bothered about the stuff they carry. They are only interested in the money they get,” another official said.

According to sources, a good number of carriers who are used by the fake currency racket belong to Kasargod and Malapuram districts in Kerala. They predominantly use the false bottom concealment method to smuggle the fake currency.

“The trade secret is that when they bring fake currency worth Rs 25 lakh, they have one or two lakh worth of original notes kept on top of the bundle to mislead the enforcement agencies,” an official said.

If the carriers manage to come out of the airport without any trouble , they hand over the notes to the agents waiting outside the airport. The money is then taken to the respective destination via road. The money is mainly used in real estate business, where the circulation of black money is very high.

“In most of the real estate deals, about 50 percent of the transaction amount is given as black money. The agents use the fake currency to pay this 50 percent. So it is difficult for the person who has been cheated by the gang to approach the police, even after realising that the currency paid to him was fake,” the official added.

HOW COUNTERFEIT NOTES ENTER INDIA

Intelligence agencies have specific information that Dawood Ibrahim and the ISI are involved in the counterfeit currency racket based in the Middle East and Pakistan. This racket releases crores worth of fake notes to India through Colombo

The racket is so well-organized that they source the paper from a company in London. This is the same place from which the Indian government is also procuring the paper. They then duplicate the Indian rupee to utmost perfection The standard operational procedure of the racket is to route the fake currency consignments first to the Middle East and then to Colombo before sending it to major entry points like Chennai and Calicut.

Courtesy: Times of India

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