Kashmir's hawala scandal
Frontline investigation has unearthed evidence which suggests that at least two senior members of the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), which is committed to Kashmir's secession from India, have been siphoning off funds. It has been discovered that People's Conference leader Abdul Ghani Lone and the Jamaat-e- Islami's Amir (chief), Syed Ali Shah Geelani have used proxies and dummy bank accounts to harbour illegally obtained funds. Frontline's five-month investigation also found hard proof that massive sums of money collected for the reconstruction of the Chrar-e-Sharief shrine, and for the relief of the town's residents, have vanished.
There is no hard evidence to show where the enormous sums of money received by the Hurriyat came from; nor could it be proved that the leaders converted the funds into personal assets. The mysteries of where the money came from, and what it was spent on, remain. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed First Information Reports (FIRs) charging the two leaders with hawala offences, but the Central investigative tools is showing a curious unwillingness to go deep into the matter.
UNDERSTANDING the significance of these discoveries requires an understanding of the workings of funding terrorism in Kashmir. Since the 1991 arrests of Ashfaq Lone and Shahabuddin Ghowri in New Delhi on charges of channelling hawala funds to Kashmir terrorist groups blew the lid off the Jain brothers' hawala scandal, it has been known that illegal inflows have been supporting terrorism in Kashmir.
It has been known that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) routinely uses the West Asian hawala network as well as "Kashmiri pressure groups working from the U.K. and United States" to fund politicians associated to terrorist groups.This money is then passed on by these leaders to armed organisations.
Much of this money is skimmed off by the Hurriyat leaders, as well as their proxies, who include businessmen and journalists, for personal benefit. It is then laundered through the attainment of lawful assets like property and financial assets, which are claimed to be organisational purchses rather than personal ones. Thus, international funds arriving through hawala channels have served two purposes: they have not only paid for terror, but created a political vested interest in continued bloodshed.
The CBI's FIRs were seen as a sign of the Government's intention to resolve the last remaining string of the Jain hawala case and to attempt to establish the I.B. plan that terrorism in Kashmir was sustained through hawala inflows, nothing of the kind has so far happened.
Prime Minister I.K. Gujral's revelation in Srinagar that the Hurriyat leadership consisted of his "old friends", too, had done little to motivate investigators to discover the truth.
Frontline investigation has unearthed evidence which suggests that at least two senior members of the All Party Hurriyat Conference (APHC), which is committed to Kashmir's secession from India, have been siphoning off funds. It has been discovered that People's Conference leader Abdul Ghani Lone and the Jamaat-e- Islami's Amir (chief), Syed Ali Shah Geelani have used proxies and dummy bank accounts to harbour illegally obtained funds. Frontline's five-month investigation also found hard proof that massive sums of money collected for the reconstruction of the Chrar-e-Sharief shrine, and for the relief of the town's residents, have vanished.
There is no hard evidence to show where the enormous sums of money received by the Hurriyat came from; nor could it be proved that the leaders converted the funds into personal assets. The mysteries of where the money came from, and what it was spent on, remain. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed First Information Reports (FIRs) charging the two leaders with hawala offences, but the Central investigative tools is showing a curious unwillingness to go deep into the matter.
UNDERSTANDING the significance of these discoveries requires an understanding of the workings of funding terrorism in Kashmir. Since the 1991 arrests of Ashfaq Lone and Shahabuddin Ghowri in New Delhi on charges of channelling hawala funds to Kashmir terrorist groups blew the lid off the Jain brothers' hawala scandal, it has been known that illegal inflows have been supporting terrorism in Kashmir.
It has been known that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) routinely uses the West Asian hawala network as well as "Kashmiri pressure groups working from the U.K. and United States" to fund politicians associated to terrorist groups.This money is then passed on by these leaders to armed organisations.
Much of this money is skimmed off by the Hurriyat leaders, as well as their proxies, who include businessmen and journalists, for personal benefit. It is then laundered through the attainment of lawful assets like property and financial assets, which are claimed to be organisational purchses rather than personal ones. Thus, international funds arriving through hawala channels have served two purposes: they have not only paid for terror, but created a political vested interest in continued bloodshed.
The CBI's FIRs were seen as a sign of the Government's intention to resolve the last remaining string of the Jain hawala case and to attempt to establish the I.B. plan that terrorism in Kashmir was sustained through hawala inflows, nothing of the kind has so far happened.
Prime Minister I.K. Gujral's revelation in Srinagar that the Hurriyat leadership consisted of his "old friends", too, had done little to motivate investigators to discover the truth.