New Delhi, Aug 8 (IANS) There has been a mushrooming of several organisations related to charity, education, religion and healthcare in recent years. Indian agencies have found that not all of them are set up for the purpose that they claim.
In reality, many are just front organisations set up to receive illicit money, which eventually will be used to fund terror or create trouble in various parts of the country.
An official said that there is a major ongoing campaign against the country and hence one is getting to witness the sudden rise of such front organisations. The official added that countries such as Pakistan, which has a policy to bleed India by a thousand cuts is leading the charge.
The Pakistanis who are in charge of this job do not use resources in their own country. They have reached out to their agents operating abroad. These persons are in turn told to coordinate with their counterparts in India and then set up such front organisations.
An Intelligence Bureau official said that these organisations do not look suspicious as they do not do anything in the open. While their activities can be eventually tracked, the problem lies in the detection of their funds.
Money is brought to India through legitimate channels such as the banking sector. These amounts are usually smaller as they would need to justify the transactions to the banks. Once in the Indian banks, they are drawn out before making their way to such organisations, the official also added.
The other route which remains immensely popular even today is hawala. These elements still consider this to be the safest bet to route money into India and then hand it over to such organisations.
Another official explained that this model had a lot of success in Kerala. A large number of people from these states work in the Gulf. Most of them use the hawala channels rather than the traditional banking route to send money as they find it cheaper and safer.
Such persons based in the Gulf are targeted by these agents. These persons are handed out the money and then asked to route it into India while they are sending their own money to their families. Back in India, the families are contacted by the touts, and then the money is collected before being routed into such organisations.
An official said that these transactions are harder to track as the volume is massive. While tracking the organisation and their activities per se is not the hard part, it is the money trail that remains the challenge.
In the last ten years, the National Investigation Agency (NIA), Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Intelligence Bureau have worked tirelessly to bring down these organisations. While several organisations have been acted upon, the problem is that after a cooling period, newer ones come up.
During all these investigations, the ED in particular has found tracking the funding trail to be the most challenging. Officials say that such organisations are not limited to certain parts of the country. While smaller in number per state, their spread is across the country, and this is what makes the whole job challenging.
All these organisations and the people dealing with them have taken inspiration from the Zakir Naik-founded Islamic Research Foundation (IRF). The IRF was one of the first to set up an organisation to collect charity in the name of education and healthcare. However, a majority of the money that came into the IRF was routed towards propagating extremist ideology.
While the newer organisations may not operate on the scale of the IRF, the challenge is the sheer number of them, the official said. While some organisations work for longer periods, there are others who are set up temporarily. Such organisations come up during a natural calamity, a riot or protests.
They remain in operation for a brief period and collect money from within the country in the name of providing relief. Once the issue is done, they shut shop and then move the money to terror groups or other elements tasked with causing trouble in the country, the official also added.
–IANS
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