Big hawala racket busted in India, IB suspects underworld don Dawood Ibrahim's role

New Delhi: The Intelligence Bureau (IB) has alerted the government about numerous bank accounts, which are involved in either hawala or fake lottery schemes running across the country, possibly being operated by underworld don and India’s most wanted fugitive Dawood Ibrahim, who runs his crime syndicate from Pakistan.

During the probe, the money involved and trail via 1162 bank accounts lead the IB officials first to UAE and then to Pakistan.

According to Zee Media Group, the IB, with inputs from the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), has submitted a detailed and secret report over the said scam to the Home Ministry.

While trying to bring back black money stashed abroad, the IB has informed the Centre that majority of the bank accounts belong to government banks, in which State Bank of India tops the list.

As per the report, in Bihar, 30 percent of such kind of suspicious accounts have been identified, 18 percent in West Bengal while Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Madhya Pradesh follows the list with 18, 13.5 and 11 pecentage respectively.

As per the cases investigated by the ED, Rs 4,193.39 crore is the estimated size of the scam so far.

The D-Company plays a key role in hawala transactions, which are also used by Pakistan to fund its terror activities. The IB report explains the racket’s modus operandi and how it is heavily dependent on Indian agents.

The report states that while 1,175 Pakistani phone numbers are under scanner, 305 Indian phone numbers are in constant touch with these numbers.

Citing the reason behind SBI topping the list of hawala bank accounts, the Intelligence report said that opening accounts in government banks are easier than getting one in private bank, said Zee News reporter Manish Shukla.

Furthermore, as per a Daily Mail report, the Pakistan-based racketeers get their contacts to call up Indian numbers randomly and convince the call receiver that s/he has won a lottery. The agents then ask the ‘winner’ to deposit in a specified Indian bank account “collection and processing charges” – from Rs 50, 000 to over Rs 1 lakh, depending upon the “winning amount” – to claim the windfall.

For this, the Indian agents ‘hire’ bank accounts and ATM cards from different individuals by paying them some amount in return. Once the money is deposited, the agents quickly withdraw the amount and send it through hawala to Pakistan via Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The dreaded D-Company is also suspected of having a role in the Rs 1,000-crore hawala racket that was unearthed by Income Tax officials in Kolkata on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Shukla added that on the basis of inputs from the IB, government may conduct more raids at various other parts of the country to unearth more such hawala rackets.