| | Drug profits moving 'through Indian bank system' AKI
03/10/2010
By Marco Liconti
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Rome - By Marco Liconti - The Roman emperor Vespasian once quipped, "Money has no smell". Now more than 2,000 years later there is a money flow which has no ethnic, ideological or religious barriers as profits from Afghanistan's enormous opium production move through unscrupulous financial institutions from the Middle East to Asia.
Intelligence sources have told Adnkronos that Afghan drug trafficking has found one of its preferred channels to be "the uncontrollable Indian banking system".
When approached for comment, Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said "it would not surprise me".
A recent report by UNODC estimated the value of Afghan opium exports to be worth 2.8 billion dollars in 2009.
In a report released in January, UNODOC said Afghans also had to pay approximately 2.5 billion dollars in bribes, equivalent to 23 per cent of the country's gross domestic product last year.
"Drugs and bribes are the two largest income generators in Afghanistan: together they correspond to about half the country's (legitimate) GDP," said Costa at the time.
Some experts estimate that between five and 10 percent of the 65 billion dollars derived from the global opium market are recycled via informal banking channels, such as the 'hawala', or money brokers which are popular in the Islamic world, while the rest is moved through the banking system.
The arrest in December last year of Naresh Kumar Jain, an Indian billionaire believed to be responsible for a vast recycling empire with an estimated annual "turnover" of 1.5 billion euros has opened up new avenues of inquiry for investigators.
Jain is suspected of being one of the world's leading underworld bankers.
The Serious and Organised Crime Agency said that he was responsible for laundering millions of dollars of profits from organised crime gangs in the United Kingdom over several years.
Jain, 50, was arrested in New Delhi in December, a year after he jumped bail on money laundering charges in Dubai, from where he allegedly ran his operations.
But many observers remain concerned about the lack of security in the banking system and the role of the hawalas.
Last month the Financial Action Task Force, an international body with 33 member countries, expressed concern about the role of countries such as Iran, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Turkmenistan and North Korea and the lack of controls on financial transactions.
The lack of controls in the United Arab Emirates has not escaped the attention of Italian intelligence officials. In a recent report to the Italian parliament, the officials said that Dubai was one of the major "stopovers" for drugs coming from Afghanistan.
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