Hawala racket: Indian accused of terror financing by US

An Indian businessman with alleged links to Dawood Ibrahim and Al-Qaeda and accused of terror financing by US’ Homeland Security was today booked by Enforcement Directorate for running an alleged hawala operation to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore.

Naresh Jain’s residence was searched by sleuths of Enforcement Directorate during which they claimed to have recovered unaccounted cash of Rs 60 lakh from his residence in Pitampura of North Delhi, official sources said on Friday.

The sources said the searches were carried out at eight premises of Jain, who was accused of being a mastermind hawala dealer. His operations are believed to be spread over Nigeria, Italy, Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Bolivia, Congo and Cooks Island among other countries.

They claimed that Jain along with his brothers Bimal and Satpal used to undertake hawala operations for underworld don and global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim and even for Al-Qaeda and further investigations are on.

Papers showing transactions of several crores of rupees with different Pakistan and Afghanistan based persons and entities were also found and seized, the sources said.

Jain or his brothers was not immediately available for comment.